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!
Hawaii Woodshow 2013
The 2013 Hawaii Woodshow opening night was well attended, had over 80 pieces of excellent work, a lot of sales that night, and ohhhh… the beautiful woods they use!
check this link out… http://woodshow.hawaiiforest.org/
AWFS 2013 in Las Vegas!
After the tour of old haunts and the older shops in Europe and finishing the trip with a presentation to the UK Marquetarian society, we returned from record heat in sweltering London, to more hot weather in Las Vegas. The AWFS show was good, attendance up slightly from the year before, more sales with optimism that was apparent. The first 4 hour session on Marquetry (of course) and a four-hour presentation on vacuum forming and laminating. This subject of vacuum is becoming more relevent in my shop for cutting edge new work, such making dresses for this bustier top, or the pod cabinet that was done my infusing epoxy into a form to create the staves. More to come !!
This 6’ diameter piece is an dynamic display cabinet, featuring ten articulated nestling doors made of epoxy infused fiberglass, compound curved doors, brushed black oak shelves and gold plated steel hardware. One finger operation.
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!