Veneer Art, Marquetry Furniture and Design
This armoire was commissioned to hold a collection of jewelry, to organize, veiw and keep in a safe place. The challenge was to create a densely packed interior storage for diverse jewelry, including a few secret compartments. The marquetry of abalone shell and dyed wood veneers highlighted the hummingbird, and I enjoyed creating the imagery. […]
This wearable wood concept started in 2010 when Wesly Johnson and I took on the challenge to create some wooden clothing that could be comfortable, fashionable, could be easily put on and taken off, durable and serviceable as any fine garment should be. Wesly works with fabric, and I the wood, and the mechanics of […]
This was a commissioned piece, for a wall-hung 6′ diameter pumpkin-shaped cabinet with 10 articulated doors. A departure from marquetry into designing a way of forming of epoxy infused panels to create a visual and mechanically dynamic art piece, for a utilitarian cabinet type setting. A favorite combination of mine is the red Mercedes gloss, […]
Making the critically sized divider blocks for the pivoting drawers on this table held up this project for quite some time, since I was unsure about drilling eight extremely precise holes with only vague lines for reference. Two weeks making jigs, three hours for milling the four blocks and eight minutes for drilling the holes. Challenging little things, which had to milled to a […]
A customized grand piano that required a strip of marquetry going around the outside of the piano casework, 23′ of a continuous vine made of marquetry. It was first made of smaller sections, joined together and glued onto the wooden side of the piano.
This was an interesting little side project from FACL (Fine Arts Conservatory Laboratories) that had the task of remounting a Banksy graffiti art original, that was found on a wooden building in San Francisco not long ago. Graffiti is banned in the city, so the new purpose would be to convert it into a museum display piece that […]
Three-ply, decoratively veneered, serpentine, cabinet faces. This piece was collaboration between two shops, where we did the veneer work here in Santa Barbara, and the casework was done by Steve Balter in Seattle, WA. The curved front face of the cabinet has a serpentine footprint, and the finished three-ply skins that make a stable yet flexible 2mm […]
This elaborate mirror needed to be increased 12″ in height, so we added a matching section in the middle with new turned ebony, bone, padauk parts. Very small, (down to 1/8″ long) The 500 + micro turnings were set into a frame made of pewter, bone and ebony inlay. We matched the original work, where all the turned parts are not […]
This customized vehicle with walnut burl veneer components were inlaid with 75 feet of mother of pearl strips, then lacquered to achieve a high gloss. These vehicles are extremely high end SUVs with lots of fine leather, electronic gear and quite flashy once the gloss lacquer over the veneered components is polished out.
This cabinet was quite unusual and to my knowledge the first of its kind… It has an interior illuminated semiprecious stone panel in the door, in order to project light through the stone out into the sanctuary. This project took well over one year to construct, was the biggest Pietra dure panel I have ever […]
This project was for the Loyola University in New Orleans, two crests, 48 inches; and 30 inches in diameter. All USA sustainable woods, water base finish, LEEDS compliant, glued onto 1/4 inch phenolic MDF, and delivered on time… Click here for more pics and info
This project is called the ‘Funion’ and was started as an experiment in wind driven kinetic sculptural design and the effort to make it light weight enough that it would spin in wind. It worked quite well, and will most likely lead to larger pieces in the future. Its strength relies on the interlocking shape […]