Alan Burgess, Arizona Cypress Side Table (Furniture)

A side table with three helical legs. This piece is 360mm diameter with height 490mm. The top and bottom panels are made from Arizona cypress, salvaged from a fallen tree in an arboretum. The legs were hand and lathe-carved from a hollow birch plywood tube, that was made by assembling 21-ply strips of birch plywood, following the old shipwright’s technique for making hollow spars using a traditional birds-mouth bit. This form of construction was chosen to ensure that the plywood laminations are parallel to the circumference all the way around the cylinder. Two Huon pine link-plates are located at the ends of the helical section, to provide a contrasting visual transition between the different timber textures and also to cover the concealed fixings. The assembly is held together with screws and can be disassembled for air transport to its final destination. The final stage in this project was to hand-blend the spirit stain for the birch because I could not find a commercial colour anything like this cypress. In use this piece has slightly sculptural qualities; the legs catch side-lighting from windows from any direction and their silhouette changes continuously as the observer moves around the room.

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