Commission

I wanted to share some good news. I have received a commission for a living room table with a unique feature. The table will be similar in form to a coffee table with the addition of a peripheral curb for receiving a person's feet, i.e., a footrest. The table will be made of hand-split, hand-tool-worked black cherry harvested from a farm in downstate Illinois once owned by Ulysses S. Grant and stored and air-dried for 20 years in a barn nearby that was a frequent overnight sleeping place for Abraham Lincoln when he was in town for business.

The curb will be fashioned from a hand-woven textile. The textile will be woven on a loom designed by myself and made by candlelight solely with 18th century hand tools, the same tools used in constructing the table proper, and while in authentic 18th century clothing. The candles will be made from beeswax harvested from hives on the property and melted in a solar oven. The same hand-made clothing, made from organic cotton, will be worn during the construction of the table. The clothing and loom will be destroyed upon completion of the project.

The textile will be 100% wool, hand shorn from only the head and neck region of Peruvian free-range alpacas, raised at 5000 meters elevation by indigenous peoples and fed only locally-gathered organic grains and raw eggs from a species of non-endangered, South American hummingbird. Only 100% natural dyes will be used in coloring the fabric, which will be hand washed in the river Lys in Belgium. Only three yards of this exclusive fabric will be made, and the pattern will be burned in a ceremony atop Mount Evans in Colorado the day after the fabric returns from Europe, delivered by pigeons which are direct descendants of the birds raised and crossed by Darwin himself in developing his seminal tome, On the Origin of Species (1859).

The finish will be 100% walnut oil pressed from walnuts harvested from old-growth Walnut trees at a nearby property owned by The Nature Conservancy and managed by the Shawnee Group of the Sierra Club.

I am very excited and feel privileged and humbled to be chosen for this unique and inspiring project, which I estimate will start in about 2016 to be completed in about 2019.