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Fine Woodworkers

A hanging display shelf

This client wanted a display area to fit within a nook in their home in Hilton Head, SC. I knew I wanted to do a "hanging" system using french cleats so that it appeared to float on the wall.

I had one board of curly Ceylon Satinwood that I'd come by years ago. I sent pictures of the wood along with a very rough concept sketch to the client. They liked the wood and then simply allowed me the freedom to come up with something that would work. I combined the Satinwood with Utile and Walnut ( all solids .. no veneer ) to come up with the design.

Initially I was going to have the center Utile pieces as "slats" with space between them. On looking at the mock up, Betsy said "How about using a contrasting wood instead to fill those spaces ?". Darned if she wasn't right
( why is that always true of wives ? ). The only issue was that I was doing hand cut mortise and tenon joinery ( a total of 24 ) and now I had to cut matching mortises for the walnut to fit around the tenons !!

I think the result was worth the effort.

Only thing I forgot was to get close up pictures of the beautiful grain in the walnut "spacers" that connected the top shelf to the bottom one.

As an aside, both the client and I agreed that it looked too nice to call a "shelf" but we were both stumped on what exactly to call this.

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