Ely Collection
(2025) Ash
Inspired by gothic and some mid-century furniture, this mirror and table were created with a very process-driven approach. Each stage I responded to the results of experiments with different wood components until I visualized my desired form. Steam bending became the most critical part of creating the curves throughout these works.
The inspiration for this project came from a planar jig that I made to plane a dowel into a half-dowel. I carried the form of a block with a 90 degree channel cut through and made pieces with different kinds of grooves. I soaked these blocks in water for 72 hours, some of which I turned first during my experimentation phase. These blocks were then steamed for an hour and bent over a curved jig to create arc shapes.
Process
Bringing these arcs together, I cut cross lap joints, which helped visualize the form of the legs for the mirror and the table. The rest of the construction involved mortis and tenon joinery to connect the legs to the table top.
The mirror required prototyping scale and shape of the mirror. The mirror template was scaled to proportion in Adobe Illustrator, printed to full scale, and used to trace onto plywood. This became the template I gave to a manufacturers to custom cut the mirror.
