Custom Elm Console Table in Wellesley
Custom Elm Console Table in Wellesley
Sometimes when a client comes to us for a piece, there are still a few different stylistic directions that things can go – and they may be wildly different. In this case, an interior designer showed us two inspiration images, one a brightly-colored, lacquered console table with lathe-turned legs and the other a live-edge waterfall. It’s hard to envision two pieces of wood furniture that embody more divergent ideas.
In this case, as the aesthetics of the rest of the home settled into place – and once the designer saw some of the slabs that were available to her – it became clear that the live-edge waterfall was the right choice here. One of the great advantages of using slabs is that our clients can actually see the exact piece of wood that’s going to be in their piece of furniture. The golden-blonde tones of this slab were exactly what this designer and her clients wanted for this comfortable, sunny living room, and they knew that the slab would fit their vision beautifully.
This sort of table is known as a “waterfall.” Rather than taking three shorter sections, and connecting them at the two corners, we take one long slab, and cut it twice, where the corners will be. That way, when we bring the three sections back together at those corners, the grain continues, unbroken, up a vertical face, across the table top, and back down the other vertical. You can literally trace each course of grain along the whole piece, from the floor back down to the floor. Even at those corners, the points in the grain lines that meet have only been cut the width of a saw blade, about 3/32”, so they meet back up beautifully.
We can do waterfalls with any sort of material, but the effect is especially striking when the whole piece comes from a single slab. There’s something remarkable about seeing that grain rolling – just like a waterfall – over the corners unbroken, and the effect only increases when the same thing happens over and over with every course of grain.
One of the great advantages of custom furniture is that we can take the functional needs of a piece into account from the moment we start designing it. With furniture “off-the-shelf”, one has to either hope their home will fit the furniture or spend an eternity looking for something that just happens to match their needs. Not so with custom. We can build a table that fits this lamp, and these two stools, and make sure the height works with the stools as well. Essentially, custom grants our clients the ability to get what they need, above all else. We don’t just make furniture that looks good, we make furniture that works well.
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