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Hand Work Hand Tool Blog

10,000 tiny pieces of wood make one impressive bit of woodworking

comments (2) April 8th, 2011 in blogs

Matthew Kenney, senior editor

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I enjoy scrolling through our online readers gallery. It's great to see all of the work that my fellow woodworkers are doing. Earlier today, I stumbled onto a truly amazing bit of work by Des King. At first, I couldn't tell what it was, but then I read that it is a landscape created with over 10,000 tiny pieces of kumiko, those little pieces of wood used to make shoji screens in Japan. But, wait, there's more. Every single piece of kumiko was cut and fit with tools. I'm certainly impressed by Des's skill, but I think I'm more impressed with his patience, focus, and drive. It takes a great deal of fortitude to pull off a project like this.

I then found this shoji screen by Des. You should check out his website, too.

I could go on and on, but sometimes it is just better to share what you've found and let others discover it for themselves. That's what I'll do.

Great work Des!

posted in: blogs, readers gallery, asian, kumiko

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Comments (2)

sdbranam writes: And Matt, I'd also like to mention that some of the simpler patterns look like they could be done using many of the techniques you used for your tiny jewelry boxes, like your small shooting board. Much of the work appears to depend on precise shooting of angles, matched up with slots carefully cut with a dozuki.
Posted: 8:18 am on August 27th

sdbranam writes: Beautiful stuff on the blog at his site, too. I'll have to give some of this a try! I like his gift screens that are made up of kumiko coasters.
Posted: 8:12 am on August 27th

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