Fine Art Furniture Notes Archive

Aquila Marina – Three Masted Schooner

In 1974 I worked on a three masted schooner renovation at Milbay Docks in Plymouth England.

The boat had been bought by a group of investors who wanted to refurbish it into a floating restaurant. It was to be moored in Monaco where the guests would be fed and taken for a sail for which they would pay handsomely.

The boat was originally made in Denmark but was in very bad condition. When it was towed across the harbor at Milbay the prow of the ship pulled away. Almost everything had to rebuilt except the hull itself.

There were three or four investors in this project. Jochen Mass, the German champion racecar driver was the principal owner. Another I met was a photographer from America. The third was a man called Colin Kitchen who headed up the project. I understand that there may have been a fourth partner.

Kitchen had also been in the racecar business and sold out his share to a cigarette company. He had a naval background and had at one time worked as an official at Falmouth Docks where he almost caused a strike when he had several men arrested for pilfering dockyard equipment.

Working on the Aquila marina was a fantastic job. I worked right through the weekends starting at dawn each morning and continuing to work until late at night.

My first job was painting the hull. I had a five-gallon bucket of white paint and a brush and I painted hour after hour floating on a raft around the boat. When one coat was completed I began the next. Only when there were several coats did I progress from white paint to blue. I painted so much blue that the color began to have a strange effect on me. I felt almost a starvation for any other color.

The men working on the project were characters every one. There was Jason, a skinny enthusiastic young man with flaming red hair who was primarily a fantastic yachtsman but also loved ship’s carpentry. He lived on an old lifeboat moored in the estuary. He was steadily fixing the boat up to be his permanent home.

Another remarkable and very likeable character was John. But he was never called John but rather “bungalow”. This was because he had nothing “up top”. But actually that wasn’t really true. He was very clever. The name bungalow stuck because he was reckless and crazy. One of his hobbies was ocean water-skiing. He was also enormously strong. One day an enormous plank of rough sawn African Teak was delivered. The foreman said,” Bungalow bring that wood in”. John gripped it with his huge hands and like a bull elephant muscled it into the workshop. He was also fearless of heights. When we set the main mast John was up on the cross trees almost hanging from his teeth as he untied the guide ropes.

One morning John arrived at work in a really bad mood. He was spoiling for a fight. By this time I had finished my painting and was doing carpentry jobs on board. John was seething with anger about something and keeping yelling out that he wanted beat someone, anyone up. I kept very quiet and avoided eye contact. A little later the foreman got fed up with al this ranting and fire John on the spot. He had to get off the boat then and there. At lunchtime they all met in the pub and John was hired back again.

I had been hired in the same pub. I had heard that the ship was looking for a painter. I went down at lunchtime and introduced myself to Kitchen. He asked me if I could paint but before I could he answered his own question. “I don’t know anyone who can’t paint. You’re hired”.

The man who made the restaurant furniture was an interesting. He and I became good friends. His name was Philip Watson. Four times he had traveled over land from England to India. The first time he made the journey on his own. He was very young and crazy. He had the idea that he would dress respectably and wore a dark suit. In no time at all the suit became a filthy rag. He looked like a tramp. He told me that he would have been better dressed with jeans and a sweater but it was too late. He somehow got like and the itching was insufferable. He was in Turkey and decided to go up on a flat roof and take off his clothes for some relief. A Turkish lady hanging out her washing stumbled across him and screamed blue murder. Pretty soon he was taken away by the police and thrown into jail. He spent two weeks in prison and never knew if he was to be released the next day or disappear in there for the rest of his life. Upon his release he completed his journey to India.

That should have been enough but in England again he decided to make the journey again. He bought an old ambulance and agreed to take several passengers with him. Trouble again this time in Afghanistan. Just out side a town where they were camping thieves came out of nowhere and at gunpoint robbed them of all they had. They also wanted to take the two young women who were along for the trip but at this Philip started to get really angry and yell so that the thieves scurried away.

Philip contacted the police who made a great show of pursuing the thieves but they were not caught.

Anyway Philip made the beautiful teak furniture for the floating restaurant and also the carved taffrail. He was commissioned to carve the eagle figurehead and began the task. At that time however the project began to have money problems and Phil wasn’t getting paid so he took his half completed figurehead and quit.

Last I know him he had bought a small farm in Wales and was growing seed potatoes. He was married and had a little daughter called violet.

The cabinetmaker that was hired did a beautiful job making fine built-in teak cabinets and sideboard in the restaurant below decks. Another carpenter was laughed to derision though when he used a spirit level when installing doors. The ship was afloat in wet dock, rocking and even pitching in bad weather. A level was of no use on board ship.

There were three riggers. All of them worked full time at the naval dockyard in Plymouth. Surprisingly, even modern steel ships have a great deal of rigging. At that time rigging was one of the last remaining indentured apprenticeships in England. The training lasted four years. They worked on Aquila Marina in their spare time.

I remember two of their names: Les and Jonnie. Jonnie was a great guy but taciturn and while skillful he did not appear to be very bright. At that time there was a crude song sometimes played on the radio called “Jonnie Rigger”. One day someone new on the boat began to tease John in reference to his being a rigger and to his name. The riggers often worked in pairs as a team. Jennie’s partner coldly shut the newcomer up before he got out half a sentence. I remember the look in his face. He wasn’t so much defending his buddy as warning the other guy that he was crossing a very dangerous line.

I had progressed happily from painting and clean up jobs to caulking the deck and woodwork. I loved caulking. The pitch that we used to pour into the seams over the oakum was called Jeffrey’s glue. I still remember the delicious tarry smell to this day.

I slept on the boat alone at first and later was joined by Philip Watson the furniture maker and a young Scotsman called Mick. Mick just happened to be on the dock one day and asked for a job. He took over my cleaning up and did other handyman work and interior painting. Somehow Mick managed to make a mess of things. He had a crazy sense of humor and would always try to laugh it off. One day he spilt a gallon of white paint onto the deck. The paint seeped into the deck and was impossible to get off. Everything he did he somehow managed to do in a messy way. He was peeling potatoes once and somehow managed to get them so dirty that Kitchen’s girlfriend just threw them in the trash.

The cabinetmaker that made the built-in buffet sideboard below decks was a lifetime professional. The cabinets were beautiful. I remember one Sunday he brought his wife along to show her his work but the ship was pitching and she was hesitant about crossing the gangplank. The gangplank on this boat really was just a plank.

Another carpenter came to hang doors. We all began to laugh when he started using a level to true up the frames. The ship was rocking gently with the swell and every time the carpenter thought that his door was level the bubble moved. He was teased mercilessly.

For me the work on the boat was becoming progressively more interesting. Below decks there was a man called Ted who had set up a simple lathe and was making belaying pins. He made two sets of them. He also made the dead eyes and the bulls eyes. I helped him in this by drilling the holes for the ropes and carving them to a teardrop shape. By the time Ted was finished there was a foot deep of wood shavings below decks. Later there was trouble with the bilge pumps becoming blocked and I wonder if some of that blockage wasn’t due to the mounds of shavings that Ted had made while woodturning.

One day Ted wanted to drive off from the dock and spin his wheels. Everyone who saw it was profoundly impressed with the stunt as Ted burnt rubber skidding about the dockside. Later he told us he had got his foot stuck between the gas and brake peddle and had never intended such an elaborate show.

Ted had a slipped spinal disk. But that didn’t stop him climbing a rope to the top of the main mast. I had been up there myself in a boson’s chair doing some paining. For a joke I was left up there for quite a time. But I did not mind. The view was phenomenal.

Kitchen rented a space in a fiberglass boat-building workshop. One day I given the task of drilling the spars and setting eyebolts into them through which a steel rod was passed. This was for the crew to hang onto when working aloft. For some reason they bought hexagonal steel rod. I had to grind down the rod so that it would slide through the eyebolts.

As I was happily grinding away at the steel rod one of the fiberglass boat builders was casting the fiberglass form for the hull of a boat. The steel dust was wafting about the workshop so that enough of it settled into his form. When the fiberglass was removed from the mold it had bits of steel embedded into it. The owners of the fiberglass boat yard were furious and wanted Kitchen to pay for the hull. I argued that the worker could have told me to stop grinding. It was agreed to split the cost. Just at that moment Mick the Scotsman came by and began to laugh at the whole incident. He found everything amusing. Kitchen was furious, yelled at him and docked a week of his wages. Mick was crestfallen and slunk off. Kitchen turned to me and said,” He came by at the wrong time and he shouldn’t have laughed.”

Finally financial problems came to a head and for a few weeks no one was getting paid. The American photographer partner turned up and finally Kitchen got him to pay some money. The two of them did not get on. One day the photographer was below decks and asked Kitchen to get someone with a plane to take of a couple of inches of the deck beams so that the restaurant customers would not bump their heads. This brought howls of laughter from everyone.

Jochen Mass came by a few weeks later and provided more temporary funds but there was increasing friction between Kitchen and the other partners. They suspected that he was embezzling money. I never knew if he was or not but my guess was that they had been unrealistic about the costs of such a project and probably Kitchen was a poor bookkeeper if he even kept books at all.

Finally Kitchen decided to take the ship across the channel to Monaco even though it wasn’t finished. There was still considerable rigging to do and the sails had not yet been made. A few of the men agree to crew for him including Bungalow, Philip Watson and Mick the Scotsman. The whole affair was very badly planned without even sufficient food being taken for the journey.

I met Philip Watson some time after and I have the story from him. They sailed for a few days but increasingly the ship was taking on water. The weather was terrible and everyone felt wretched except for Mick who was alternatively trying to catch fish with a line from the stern of the ship and throwing up.

Kitchen had brought his beautiful American girlfriend along with him but as yet there were no washing facilities installed and no toilets. Providing a red plastic bucket rectified the toilet problem.

The bilge pump was by this time working overtime and the only one who could keep it going was Bungalow. Finally they took on so much water that the bilges over flowed and the water sloshed on the beautiful red velvet seats of the restaurant furniture. Kitchen decided to turn back as it looked as if they might sink.

Upon their return Kitchen left the project, the riggers returned to complete their work and Jochen Mass took over the project.

That was the last I heard until thirty-two years later my wife Ellen and I were on vacation in Maine.

Aquila Marina – Three Masted Schooner Continued

My wife Ellen and I were on vacation in Maine two years ago in 2006. We decided to take a sunset cruise with a sailing schooner called the Heron out of Rockport, a beautiful harbor town on the mid-coast. The heron is co-captained by Nigel Bower and his wife Bonnie Schmidt. Both of them are expert sailors. Nigel is also a fantastically skilled shipwright and Bonnie a marine biologist. Nigel built the schooner and many others at his boatyard in Camden.

We climbed on board with about a dozen other passengers and listened while the captain, Nigel Bower gave us safety instructions. I soon recognized a fellow Brit and as we set sail Nigel and I started to chat. As we spoke I happened to mention that I had once worked on a ship restoration at Milbay Docks in Plymouth. Nigel asked me the name of the ship and I replied Aquila Marina. Suddenly he fell back in astonishment.

“I sailed with the Aquila Marina in the Tall Ship’s race!”

At first I though he was puling my leg but when he said that Jochen Mass was the owner I was convinced.

Nigel filled in some of the later events of the story. Aquila Marina had always been bedeviled with problems. A significant one was the bilge pump. It was Nigel who re-installed it so that the exhaust fumes no longer filled the engine room but were vented outside. The hull of the boat still had the original Danish timbers and leaked profusely. The bilge pump was always blocking. I wondered to myself if there still wasn’t a great deal of Ted’s sawdust left in the bilge.

Finally the ship had to be rebuilt again and many of these problems were solved. It was refurbished and afloat once more only to run aground off Bremen Hafen some years later. By chance, Nigel met one of the men that had crewed at that time and all the man had to say of the sinking was, “ Sand in the bilge”

The Otter School - Ottery St.Mary

The last school that I attended in England was called The Otter School, an old manor house in the picturesque country town of Ottery St. Mary in Devon.

One of the masters at the school was a remarkable man named Mr. Eric Williamson. He had been a city architect in Nottingham before he took an early retirement and moved with his wife Freda to Sidmouth, a beautiful coastal town a short distance from Ottery St. Mary. He was a friend of the Headmaster Mr. Graham Hinson and although officially retired he agreed to teach art and art history at the school.

Both Mr. Hinson and Mr. Williamson were founding members of the Sidmouth Cine Club and made some fascinating short films that they not only showed for us at the school but had a number of the boys act parts in them.

The school closed down in 1964 because of financial difficulties but I stayed in touch with Mr. Williamson and frequently visited he and his wife at their home.

Mr. Williamson was a learned authority on many subjects including medieval arms and armor, oriental art and antique furniture. To talk with him was a tremendously rich experience and inspired me not only to enjoy knowledge for its own sake but also to delight and appreciate the quality and fine craftsmanship of beautiful antique furniture.

China Cabinet

I have just completed a very nice china cabinet for a couple in Los Angeles. They have a set of beautiful Wedgwood dishes from England and some fine glassware that they wish to display. The lower section of the china cabinet has adjustable wooden shelves with two grooves cut into the back so that the plates can be displayed standing up as well as stacked.

The top section of the china cabinet also has adjustable shelves but made of tempered glass set into wooden frames. The top section has recessed lighting to show off the glassware.

The woods chosen are my old favorites purple heart and madrone. I have a smaller collectibles and curio cabinet similar to this one displayed on my web site that is made entirely of madrone but with an oil color smoky finish. Bob Horning and his wife Naomi saw my curio cabinet but liked the wood of the curved front buffet sideboard. They needed a cabinet to hold the chinaware that was both deeper and wider.

The china cabinet easily disassembles into two pieces for shipping and fits securely together again on arrival in a matter of seconds.

All the glass in my cabinets is tempered with a polished edge. Not only does it look better it is safer than window glass and also much stronger. This is an important consideration both for shipping and daily use.

I have very much enjoyed making this cabinet for our new friends and now they have ordered a decorative standard lamp of the same woods. The lamp stand will include details of the china cabinet design.

I will write in detail about the standard lamp in a few weeks.

Fine Art Mirrors

I have recently opened a new web site entitled Fine Art Mirrors. The designs shown are intended to be both functional and as decorative art. There are many entirely different mirrors of different sizes. Each of the mirrors can be made in a wood of the customer's choice to suit their tastes and the décor of the room.

The intent is for these lovely sculptural forms to enhance any space and make even a dark alcove interesting, where the need is not so much for a looking glass but a splash of reflective light or an object of interest and beauty.

I use mirror glass of the highest quality custom with polished edges. The backs of the mirrors have a panel of wood set in and secured with wooden clips and tiny brass screws. The mirrors hang on the wall by means of "key-hole" hangers and a pattern for aligning the mirrors and positioning the screws into the wall is included with each mirror.

I hope you enjoy the new site.

Fine Art Mirrors. Detail of Wall Mirror

"Chewy"

One of the interesting aspects of having a national furniture making business is being able to get to know different people from all over the United States. Although I don't often meet my clients face to face, we quickly get to know each other through fax, email or by discussing interesting projects and designs on the phone.

My wife Ellen and I did meet Barry and Joanie Cohen for whom I made the Manhattan Table, The Interlocking Coffee Tables and a beautiful cherry wood Coffee Table But not until a year later.

We were in New York on our way to visit Ellen's brother who lives in New Jersey. We went downtown to meet the Cohens in person and see how their new dining room furniture looked in their appartment.

Barry and Joanie have a dog: a white roly-poly rascal that looks like a pirate with a black patch over one eye. Barry has taught "Chewy" to do a variety of tricks.

Barry says, "And now, what do we do when we come home from a walk and our paws are muddy?" And the dog goes into the next room and climbs into the shower!

"And what where do we keep our toys?" And the dog opens a drawer and takes out a rubber ring!

Then Barry says, "And what about closing the drawer?" And Chewy goes back and closes the door with his nose!

Barry has taught his dog at least a dozen very sophisticated tricks. It was like one ring circus all by itself in the unlikely setting of a Manhattan apartment.

Manhattan Table

More About CD/DVD Cabinets

I enjoy making CD/DVD cabinets for many reasons. I have calculated the inside dimensions of the drawers to allow for an optimum versatility to fit combinations of CDs, DVDs, or Video Cassettes or ample space for each separately.

The drawers are three inches high inside which makes it very easy to store or remove cassettes because of access to handle them by the sides.

The drawers run on wood sliders and have that pleasant wood-on-wood sound when they are opened or closed. They can also be removed entirely from the cabinet much like library card index files.

There is an adjustable wooden device of my own invention included in each of the drawers for holding the cassettes upright to prevent them falling over if the drawer is not full.

The drawer pulls can be made of solid wood like the ones shown on the MadroneCD Cabinet or with a card slot like the Twenty Drawer CD Cabinet

The wood of the drawer fronts is made from one long plank so that the same grain continues attractively through the entire face of the cabinet. The golden walnut inlay on the face of the Madrone CD Cabinet is a continuous composition.

There is no plywood in any of my cabinets. They are made entirely of solid hardwoods with floating panels both for aesthetic appeal and the practical consideration of allowing for the expansion and contraction of the wood.

A further delight is the size flexibility: the cabinets can be made to suit a small CD or DVD collection or to store an enormous number of disks.

Madrone CD/DVD Cabinet

Furniture As Art

I made the New Round Table to show at the annual Siskiyou Wood Craft Guild Show in Ashland, Oregon last November. It was very well received and considered an exciting addition to my line of Fine Hardwood Furniture. The center sculpture beneath the glass is made of purpleheart while the asymmetrical inlay surrounding it is madrone. The underside of the table is also madrone. The rest of the wood is a deep, rich purpleheart that is almost edible.

I was talking with a friend at the show about how fine furniture improves with age. It really does. The colors mature and deepen and the wood itself changes. My friend, a life-long master concert violinmaker pointed out that this change is a well-known phenomenon to violinmakers. Over time the tone of a fine violin becomes richer. And so it also does with fine furniture. It is my goal as a furniture maker, not only to design and make furniture pieces as art, but by using selected woods and good craftsmanship to make furniture that may also become the heirlooms and treasured antiques of tomorrow.

The New Round Table is 40" in diameter and comfortably seats four.

New Table

New Dining Table

Each year in Ashland, the Siskiyou Wood Craft Guild presents a fabulous furniture show. This year was the twenty-third anniversary with almost twenty exhibitors from around the region. The show lasts three days in downtown Ashland, Oregon and is a very popular Fall event with local people and the many visitors who come from out of town to be with families for Thanksgiving.

I had two new pieces in the show. The first was a new dining table, six feet long and fifty inches wide made of a combination of madrone and purple heart. The edge of the table is asymmetrical in design with the shape reflected in the corresponding inlay and sculptural center. I ran a ¼" edged inlay of ebony all around the top with another the same width separating the madrone and purple heart colors with spectacular effect.

The second table in the show was round and made with the same combination of woods. I will write more about that one next week.

New Dining Table

CD Cabinets

I worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland for five years. Along with some of the most fabulously creative people I have ever met, I made props for the eleven shows that are staged in repertory throughout the season from February through October.

Shortly after starting my own furniture business I received a telephone call from Libby Appel, the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Festival.

Libby has a beautiful home overlooking the town with some glorious views of the surrounding hills. Much of her furniture is antique: heirlooms with sentimental value. Libby asked me to make her a CD cabinet in keeping with the style and finish of the older furniture. I decided on the apothecary drawer look with a row of three drawers across the top and four high providing ample storage space for her extensive collection of classical music CDs. The dimensions of each drawer allowed not only for CDs but DVDs and Video Cassettes if necessary. The drawers run on wooden slides making that delightful wood on wood sound when they are opened. Each drawer can be removed from the cabinet for easy access.

For a finish I built up several layers of shellac and gave a final soft luster to the cabinet using a hard wax polish. On the back I mounted small brass plate with my name and signature, a practice typical with traditional furniture makers and in keeping with Libby's other furniture treasure.

Oak CD Cabinet

My Sources of Inspiration

Several sources and art impulses have influenced my work and fostered a very individual design style.

I have been greatly inspired by the Art Nouveau movement and in particular the furniture of Louis Majorelle. I also enjoy the style of Antonio Gaudi and traveled to Barcelona in 1985 especially to view his fascinating architecture. Maori carving of New Zealand, where I lived for a year and the sumptuous organic intricacy of Celtic metal work and jewelry inspired a profound interest and recognition that these instinctive and traditional peoples had a lively intimacy with nature which profoundly influenced their crafts.

The Celts followed intuitively the forms and formative processes found everywhere in nature.

Beyond these rich studies the major influence behind the compositions of my sculpted furniture remains the extensive art training I received at Emerson College in England.

Manhattan Dining Table

Sculpted Coffee Table

The inspiration for my dining tables with the center sculpture beneath the glass developed from a coffee table I made many years ago. I draw my designs with colored chalks full size so that I can erase the lines and refine the composition over and over again. Often the finished drawings, with all the beautiful chalk colors look quite lovely and I have kept several hanging on the walls of my workshop.

I was at the Art Furnishings Show in Santa Monica several years ago discussing with a visitor the idea of making a large dining table in the same manner as the coffee table. From that casual conversation developed the Santa Monica dining table that is nine feet six inches long and has an attractive center sculpture derived from the beautiful and graceful form of the calla lily. In addition I made ten chairs to compliment the table also of the same figured Oregon maple.

The customer at the show was Joe Perches and he and his wife Tam have remained our good friends ever since.

Coffee Table

New Vanya Chair

I worked for five years in the Theater Props department of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. During my third year OSF did an excellent performance of "Uncle Vanya" in the Bowmer Theater. The set was designed by the well know New York theater designer, Robert Brill.

Robert was still in New York and was only due to arrive in Ashland some weeks later. I was assigned to make the four chairs and a matching bench for the play and Robert sent me a magazine picture of a turn-of-century Russian chair with curving arms. On the basis of that picture I made the chairs, upholstered them and they were duly painted and made ready for the half-year long run on stage.

After I left the Oregon Shakespeare festival and re-opened my own furniture shop I decided to make an improved version of the Vanya Chair. As it turned out I made three versions each a little more refined and further developed than the last. Finally, "The New Vanya Chair" was a chair I was really pleased with. Many of them now grace the homes of clients in California and Nevada. Below is the one in my own home.
Julian.

New Vanya Chair

CD/DVD cabinets with inlayed top

I completed a very interesting project earlier this summer for my friend Leonard Zubkoff of Crystal Bay, Lake Tahoe.

Leonard's collection of CDs and DVDs is quite large but he also needed side tables in his living room. I made four graceful little cabinets of madrone each with two drawers and a lovely inlay of purpleheart in the surface.

The inlay I designed was a complete and continuous composition when all four cabinets were placed together in a square yet each remained complete in itself when the units were used separately. This way they could be used a coffee table in the center of the living room area or as side tables placed about the room.

Leonard enjoyed the idea that when the cabinets were used as side tables and were arranged beside the armchairs and settee the inlay design in each unit flowed and continued into all the others.

Julian

CD/DVD Cabinet

Large Oval Dining Table made of maple

I am currently working on an oval dining table for a family in Medford, Oregon. The finished table will be ten feet six inches long and forty-four inches wide.

I am using Eastern curly maple with an inlay of purple heart in the surface, a line of purple heart following the vertical edge and a combination of purple heart and maple for the curved legs. This dining table is particularly interesting because it is made in three parts. For normal family dining the center third of the table can be taken away entirely and it then functions as a separate beautifully inlayed library table.

When the three sections are recombined for family gatherings and celebrations seating up to twelve, the inlay design follows through them all in a complete composition. The Santa Monica table on my web site is also made of Oregon maple. It is nine feet six inches long and fifty inches wide.

The Santa Monica table does not separate but has a center sculptural motif beneath the glass. The sculptural design is based on the sensuous curves of the calla lily. I made ten maple chairs with graceful sweeping arms to go with the table much of the wood was from the same tree.

Julian

SantaMonica Table

Madrone

When I first came to the Pacific North West in 1976 I was astonished by my first impression of the madrone tree. It has thin red bark that peels paper-thin revealing the next layer beneath which is fresh green in color.

It reminded me of eucalyptus, which also sheds its bark in a similar manner. But I had never seen madrone before and when I first saw the lumber I was thrilled. Madrone is very dense and hard, short fibered and polishes up to an ivory smooth finish.

At a furniture show once a man told me that the word madrone means lady's leg in an American Indian language. I have never been able to verify this but the tree limbs are curvy and sensual and it makes a good story.

I have made a lot of furniture out of madrone and I find it goes particularly well in combination with purple heart. The woods are different in type with purple heart having a very open grain while madrone is very dense but the color combination of the two together is quite striking as shown in the Tahoe Table.

Tahoe Table

Purpleheart

Although I mainly use native hardwoods, for several years I have been enjoying purpleheart (or violetwood) for furniture making particularly in combination with Pacific Northwest madrone.

My buffet sideboard is a purpleheart/madrone combination as are the Tahoe tables and chairs.

Purpleheart is native to Central and South America. The heartwood is purple and is straight grained. Purpleheart is a very tall, handsome canopy tree, averaging 120 to 150 feet in height in the natural rainforest with diameters of up to 4 feet. It is a very strong wood and is apparently also used for construction in its native countries, as it is very durable.

Some years ago, a friend at a furniture show displayed a handsome wall clock with a face made of purpleheart and I found the color strikingly rich and unusual. Unfortunately he told me that the purple color fades over time, turning instead into a rich brown.

I have since found out that if the wood is kept from direct sunlight and a finish with an ultraviolet inhibitor is applied the color will retain it deep rich purple hue. When the wood is first cut, it looses the purple color but if the finished piece is left after it is sanded the purple returns as the air does its magic.

Purpleheart also has a very open grain like oak. I have on occasion filled the grain with filler mixed with artist's oil color with striking effect. But I have also left the grain open so that it retains some of its natural texture and woodiness.

Julian

Curved front buffet made of purple heart and madrone
BuffetSideboard