This marquetry class at David Marks school was in the planning for more than a year, and was a great success. His shop is located in Santa Rosa, CA, and features classes with David as well as other instructors. There are several marquetry and inlay artists that have taught there, and David teaches furniture building, joinery, turning, metal patination, gilding, as well as his double bevel technique of marquetry. The marquetry class had a few people from out of state, but mostly local woodworkers. As you can see from the pics, there were several projects that were very different in nature, generated from concepts that students brought to the class. One of the projects was marquetry with turned wooden vessels. Here was one that had a strand of flowers laminated onto the conical surface of a turned bowl. It was a great opportunity to demonstrate a ‘free bagging’ technique, where one can make a vacuum bag with clear 6-mill poly plastic and plumbers’ putty, in order to apply clamping pressure onto a compound surface, which would otherwise be next to impossible.
Hawaii marquetry class
The two, 2-day Hawaiian Marquetry Classes in Oahu and on the Big Island had an interesting blend of traditional and contemporary woodworkers, ukulele makers, with a few attending from different countries. All are in love with Hawai’i, and cherish using the beautiful indigenous woods that grow on the islands. It is an expensive place to live, and most items that we mainlanders find easily and take for granted, are hard to obtain, or cost a fortune to ship. (even veneer!!)
The objective of this 2-day class was to cut local wood into shop-sawn veneer, and create marquetry using the packet cutting technique normally reserved for thinner 1/42” veneer. This together with other tools and supplies found at local hardware stores, marquetry was made, and quite nicely I might add!
I am certain we shall see some great marquetry at the annual Hawaii Woodshow 2014!
MASW class Oct.1-7 2012 for ‘Cabinets as Fine Furniture’
The Class at Marc Adams School of Woodworking on Oct 1. -7, 2012 was an action packed event, with 18 students cranking out an original cabinet/jewelry box with a curved front panel with veneer or marquetry, anywhere between 30” and 60” high. Quite an accomplishment for all 18 students, some of which had never done marquetry, or even cabinetry before. The work was fast paced, with 3 full size vacuum presses running curved work for three days straight, joining machines and hand tools everywhere. The pressure was on by Thursday and the school looked pretty trashed by Friday, and almost everyone completed what they set out to do, with an astonishing range of marquetry designs, which you can see here…
I enjoyed the 7 days of teaching, seeing all the different ways something can be done, along with the challenges of solving some of the most vexing problems and high stake dilemmas presented during the week, It was quite invigorating, inspiring and exhausting. However, great fun was had, wood chips, dust was made, and everyone cranked out some impressive stuff. I look forward to teaching here again in 2014 after my sabbatical !
Mike Harrinton finished his cabinet first and sent me his pic…… Karillian Birch, Mahogany with a Cherry framework. Very nice!!
Arizona Marquetry 5-day Seminar
The class filled up the shop at the local Woodcraft Store in Phoenix, and was great!
These guys are an interesting group of woodworkers, and it was my first time working with them. They did so well, and produced a diverse set of panels, all of them excellent and everyone finished, some just in the nick of time! Raul hosted me and cooked great meals, and a past student, Marco, assisted in the classroom, made jokes, running errands and making this tight space workable for all. The people at Woodcraft and I had the tough job of judging the final panels that everyone designed and made, which was interesting given the level of artwork everyone did. The classifications were for the ‘overkill’ (most pieces used), most Challenging, most Humorous, most Unusual (design wise that is) and the best piece overall, which went to the frog on a limb.
Excellent class!
Annual Marquetry Class at my Shop in Santa Barbara CA
The annual class at my shop here in Santa Barbara was quite successful, fun, fast-paced, and productive. Everyone made a couple of pieces, we did a group project, and Randy tackled an intricate ebony table. I have limited this class to 6 people, where we can spread out, and do many different things during the five days.The comments were ‘fast paced’, ‘very informative’, ‘intense’. One of the students, Michael, blogged about the class on the Sawmillcreek.org woodworking forum. Free to sign up, big following with a lot of content…. here is the link to the blog, with a more in depth day-to-day commentary with pics, if you sign up:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?175490-Marquetry-Course-with-Paul-Schurch&p=1804970&posted=1#post1804970
Here are a few photos of the week….