If you read and appreciate books, as I do, then you probably appreciate the functional aspects of a bookcase. If you enjoy beautiful materials and elegant, understated design, as I do, then I hope the design of this piece will appeal to you as well. I built it with a matched set of curly maple boards, which I purchased from Irion Lumber. I paired the maple with sexy, straight-grained bubinga for the base. And I used East Indian rosewood as an accent.

There is a lot of exacting joinery in the carcase, which has sliding dovetails joining the shelves to the sides and half-blind dovetails joining the sides to the bottom. That’s all spelled out in the drawing. But for this article I’ve chosen to focus on the base and the top molding. These two components might not be the first things to catch your eye, but they are vital to the look of the piece, and they are both a bit more challenging than they might seem.

The feet on this base pack a lot of curves and unusual joinery into a small space. I begin making them by cutting the angled kerf for the gunstock miters. These little miters add a bit of refinement to the design, and also eliminate short grain that might be prone to breaking off. I cut them with a miter gauge on the tablesaw. I cut the mating miters on the aprons now as well.

With those cut, I mortise the feet and aprons to accept slip tenons. I do this with a plunge router and a 3⁄8-in. upcutting end mill bit. I built a jig for the router that makes the mortising go quite smoothly.

The feet flare outward, making the feet and aprons slightly concave on their outer faces.…