Music…. is a little French style table of my own design. In Marie Antoinette's day it would have been called a writing table and I would like to think she may have been amused by it.
The design started as an idea for a leg that I sketched up last winter, gathered speed when I did a chevalet demo at the local fine arts show in the spring and sort of grew from there.
The central motif is an etude from The American School of French Marquetry and the other designs are adaptations of various motifs found in Pierre Ramond's Masterpieces of Marquetry series of books.
The substrate is western maple and the top is baltic birch plywood. Joinery is mortise and tenon. The solid edges of the top and the balls on the legs are queen ebony. The marquetry is done in macassar ebony, birdseye maple, purpleheart, green poplar, holly, mahogany, bubinga, and in the central motif only, dyed yellow, black and green. I may have missed a few.
As near as I can count there are about 1500 individual pieces. The cutting was done on the chevalet in a combination of Boulle, piece by piece (classic), and painting in wood styles depending upon the requirements of the element. All assembly is with 192 gram hot hide glue, there is no metal. The finish is french polish.
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