a round walnut table with leaves

i delivered a table to south boston earlier this week ... great neighborhood,  lots of old 5 story brownstones with original details .. the front doors were just fantastic .. the houses are narrow, 19, and the counter on the right in the room above is part of the kitchen, so the room were looking at in this picture is only about 9 or 10 wide, including the fireplace .. so, its tight.

click the photos to enlarge them ..

the request was for a smallish table (42" diameter) that would live in the round bay window

 most of the time, and then open up (to 10) for friends and family gatherings.  it is based on this slightly fancier version we made back in 2008.

this one is mahogany with burl and ebony accents.  and a little smaller at 39" in diameter.

it opened up almost as far though, and was in a philadelphia brownstone on pine street, 

that was of more or less the same era.

heres the new one, opened up to its full length in the sunny, and inviting space.  there are normally  two chairs in front of the fireplace and tv, that can be easily moved out for large gatherings...

super elegant neighborhood now, but my client tells me that a lot of it was boarded up when he moved in about 30 years ago .. never know it now .. interestingly, across the street, all the houses have angled bays, while on this side they are rounded.

 sunny neighborhood!

we started with some fine irion lumber walnut

 the boards for the main top were about 18" wide, and trevor flattened them on the cnc

then he cut the plywood base pieces with the round space for the center leg, and veneered them 

with 1/16th" walnut.  as usual, the extension runners are from our friends at moin hardware ... 

 

we had to order a set of custom slides, which was no problem at all for moin.  you need to have an odd number of segments in order to have a center leg.  in this case we had 9 segment runners ..in this case, because of the wide opening capacity, (106"), we may be making another 15" leaf to make 

the extended table as long as possible.

here it is, before finishing and hardware

fun project !

at the same time, trevor is also wrappping up this 66" round table with three leaves.  similar to one we made earlier this year .. that one will be ready to roll next week .. more photos of that one when its completed.

you all have a lovely weekend .. 

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the pawlet potter

        

 ahhh, the pawlet potter.  marion mcchesney ... kit and i have known her and her family for years.  she and lee moved out into the country from downtown pawlet a few years back, so i dont get to stop in and see her stuff quite so often as i used to ... click the photos to enlarge them ..

 

earlier this week though, jim and i were in the neighborhood as they say.  it was a beautiful sunny day, and marion was in her sweet little studio, so we stopped by to pay her a visit.

you may have seen her on david letterman, (correct me if im wrong marion, but it was one of those famous tonight type shows), with her roadkill pottery.  dead stuff stamped into wet clay.  very clever.  kit and i have rescued a few flattened things for her in the past, and as a result we have acquired a little collection of roadkill ourselves over the years .. bowls, plates, tiles ... very cool stuff.

roadkill tiles ..

a big roadkill bowl in a place of honor .. on a table from 1980, and a curved front, curved glass cabinet from 1981 .. with a pete millett horse from the early 70s ... the wire sculptor is unknown.  got it as a gift from a client ... interesting reflections in the windows ...

its a pretty big one .. those are flys in the middle there ..

but bobs bowl is the biggest marion piece we have.  in fact, i think she said it was one of her biggest ever.  bobs a big cat.  im guessing the bowls about 22-24" in diameter and about 5" deep.  he just fits ..

marion does serious handbuilt and thrown stuff too.  theres an artists eye there that, being a bit of a potter myself, i find humbling and inspirational ...

great space .. really great south light!

 

artistically arranged

stop in yourself if you are in rural pawlet ... a bit off the beaten path, but definitely worth the trip.
see it all here ...

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so heres yet another staggering statistic

station WXYK, 107.1, the monkey, in gulfport, mississippi posted a photo of our stairs back in july of 2012.  i have been hearing reports from friends that this photo has been floating around on the internet for a while now.  i guess so ... i got an email from my client about a week ago who had gotten an email from her sister-in-law on the 4th of january telling her that she had seen her stairs on facebook.  at that time, the photo had, i think, 491,000 shares.  i checked today, and it has gone over a half million shares now ... viral, id say.  so, unfortunately, the monkey forgot to give us credit for building them, if they even knew.   i think we missed a major marketing boat ..  maybe next time.  but then, theres a link there now, and, its still going .. 9,000 shares in three days is not too shabby. 

heres a link to an april 2014 blog post about adding a railing to those stairs ..

and heres a link to a blog post on an even bigger set we built and sent to palo alto in april of 2009.

 below we have our other staggering statistic, one million blog page views ... and after about 6 years of blogging, i was considering hanging up my pen ... i think ill go for a while longer now ..

id love to hear some comments here .. thanks!  dan

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so heres a staggering statistic

one MILLION, 37 thousand 626 page views .. whod a thunk it.

 thanks for reading this stuff ... 6 years of blogging as of the 22nd.

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