When you walk into your run-of-the-mill furniture store these days, you tend to see a lot of squares in the pieces. There are some round end table, a few oval coffee tables, and the rare bombe dresser. What you don’t tend to see are irregular shapes or live edges. However, those attributes can be found in plenty in the custom furniture market and in smaller studios.
If you browse through the woodworking blogosphere, you can find plenty of folks making beautiful pieces with live slabs. A couple of great examples:
Dan Mosheim of Dorset Custom Furniture:
Dale Osowski of Timberwerks Studio:
Both are exceptional pieces from highly talented craftsmen, but they lead me to one question: Why just hall tables and benches? About 99% of the live edge/irregular pieces I’ve seen are either hall tables or sitting benches. Don’t get me wrong, I love these pieces, but why haven’t live slabs become popular as cabinet/dresser tops, low entertainment centers, or desks? You see the occassional coffee table or countertop, but these gorgeous slabs don’t seem to travel much farther than that.
So my question for the reader is “Why? Why don’t we see more slabs?”
Perhaps the largest reason we mainly see slabs used as we do is because of there size, thickness and beauty. A table allows us to showcase all of this without taking away from the attention it deserves.
Also because our first exposure to such work is what we have seen by the late George Nakashima. Most of the work I have seen from him is tables. It takes us woodworkers a little time to find our own style and incorporate live edge and slabs into new designs.
A good example of using slabs in a different way is in the new issue of Fine Woodworking. The gallery section features a beautiful bed made by David Stine. The headboard incorporates a arched set of live edged slabs.
I absolutely agree that we should explore new ideas for slabs and live edges. Actually all the pieces I am building for this years Fine Furnishings show will have elements of live edges or use slabs. The cabinets have either live edge doors or live edge as part of their case constructing. This includes a whiskey cabinet and even a lingerie cabinet. There will even be a low media cabinet. The media cabinet is by request of my wife for our living room but I think I will include it in the show.
Interesting topic, I’d like to read thoughts from others on this.
Another item that would be interesting to discuss is. Do people consider all slab and live edge work to be rustic? I’m not a fan of rustic so I try to do my best to use slabs and create contemporary pieces.