A Table Beyond Tables: The Work Begins

Everyone who knows me knows I like a challenge; they also know I’m happy working with my hands. So I’ve decided, as my summer project, to make a table beyond tables.

I’m starting with the two vital elements: wood and text.

The wood is astonishing. For a remarkably reasonable price, I managed to lay my hands on a slab of bubinga, 8 feet long by 30 inches wide. Bubinga is just gorgeous. I keep photographing it from every angle in every light to try to come up with a photo that does it justice. Here are a few shots….

I have, however, cut it down in length slightly, as maneuvering an 8-foot slab of very dense wood is something I’m not equipped for. In any sense. One of the first steps was to build a pair of sawhorses so I can work at the tabletop whether standing or sitting.

For the text, I’ve decided to use, courtesy of the skilled and helpful Zafry Hadi, the phrase “Om and shanti, shanti, shanti and om” in the version of the Pallava script that was used in the great spiritual centre at Angkor, a thousand years ago. This is what it looks like on a much smaller scale:

The phrase, or chant, will repeat around the table as a border, with lotuses in the corners.

In the end, with a maple skirt and black walnut legs, it will be a large dining table or small conference table, 80″x30″.

I would like to sell it, and the asking price will be $6,000. (Good luck getting a moderately nice table for under $4,000 in the stores, even without carving. Or bubinga.) But if it doesn’t sell, it will become an heirloom.

I’ll keep posting work-in-progress shots and the summer progresses. And if you like the general idea but want a different text, as it happens I managed to score a second slab of bubinga at the same time, so we can have a design conversation.

Onwards!

Tim