BenchMarc

I love your design here. It really is unlike anything else I've seen before. Nice work!

Thanks Greg. I really appreciate that.

Wow - you don't step away from a challenge! The paneling creates an interesting border and I like the exposed case dovetails. Are the legs joined to the case with a massive sliding dovetail? What was the rough thickness of the drawer front material? Really, an outstanding effort.

I really love this chair. Do you have more pictures of it? I'm assuming that you copied the chair exactly as you saw it in the book, however, I wonder if you were to make it again - would you wrap the carved brackets around to the side? They are such an attractive detail and the high execution of the rest of the chair almost demands that you pull out all stops.

Once again - WOW! Was this a companion piece to the quilted cherry china buffet or are these two separate clients?

Omar, what did you have in mind when you were designing the carving?

I think that maybe your clients should up-grade the artwork above your beautiful cabinet. The carved work is really excellent, and the design is well-balanced overall.

Really a lovely thing! The base is exquisite and perfectly weighted for the top. I have never seen buckeye burl before, but the color variation and chatoyance of the burl remind me, to some degree, of granite. Excellent job all around.

Thanks HH! I'm glad you like it.

While I like the overall design very much - as an interpretation of the Maloof style - I wonder about the grain orientation of the crest rail. Considering that the crest rail is an important structural element that ties the chair together, why did you choose to orient the grain vertically? It would seem that cross-grain in this area would result in a weaker chair. It looks better, visually, but is it strong?

This is just awesome! I think that designing the stringing inlay as a sort of foreshadowing of what lay beneath the surface was an incredible design idea. I also like the way that the rectilinear case rests inside of a curvilinear base - much the way a faberge egg rests in it's ornamental base. And then there's the articulation of the moving parts, inside. Really nice work. This should be a feature article in the magazine (if it isn't already).

The carving is articulate and engaging. I would really like to see clearer pictures of the piece, as a whole. What I see, speaks to me on a visceral level. Really nice work!

This is a truly fine interpretation of the G&G style. What I like most of all is the relationship of the upward arcing apron to the lower back stretcher. Overall, the piece appears well balanced and makes excellent use of negative space. Great work!

Thank you for the gracious compliment. What is truly awesome to me is the enormous scale of the full-size carving. It must be about 15' long, or more. In fact, many of the carvings on the ship are within the 6' to 12' range; owing to the relative size of an 80 gun wooden warship. The effort to translate the original scale model - something that amounts to 12 inches, or less - into something so enormous is truly an accomplishment, IMO. If you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, with a day to spare, take a train out to Lelystad and a cab to Batavia Werf. No woodworker will leave disappointed.

Your bookcase really captures the organic form that is the trademark of the Art Nouveau period. I also built a case-on-case Art Nouveau bookcase, that I intend to post sometime in the near future. When I do, you will see that there a few interesting and entirely coincidental parallels between the two bookcases.

Specifically, the general proportions of upper to lower-case (I had the Nicholas John Brown Newport Secretary in mind) and the tear-drop accent of your lower-case, upper-rail are very similar.

I really love it. Soup-to-nuts, you did an amazing job! I'm going to your website now, to see more pics.

As always, I appreciate the compliments. This was the third of three Maloof rockers that I made, but I had not ever made a chair of any kind before that. So yes, I am proud of the results.

Really outstanding design and impeccable execution. The hardware perfectly compliments the design

I love it!

Thank you both for the kind words. This was a fun project because the techniques that Sam used are really liberating. The important thing is to cut nicely mating joints and then you can fair the parts into each other. The initial wood removal really can be approximate, hence Sam's preference for using the bandsaw. My chair was made entirely from 8 qtr stock, just like the originals. Be prepared for a lot of wasting, and don't be shy. I used everything at my disposal, including a chainsaw attachment for the disc grinder and abrasive grinding discs. The Nicholson #50 is your best friend after that.