Julienne Dawidoff, Tambour Walk-Around (STUDENT 2024)

Student:

Tertiary

Name of school or tertiary institution, name of woodworking teacher (if you have one), and name of photographer:

The Krenov School, Photographer: Todd Sorenson

Video tour:

https://vimeo.com/999985191?share=copy

Eastern maple, shellac finish. 55” h x 15” w x 13” d Fascinated by the inherent movement of tambour, I worked to take its traditional construction and push it to its limits. I started by asking the question “How could tambour be visible around the entirety of a cabinet?” I thought about the curl of a palmier cookie and rond de jambe from my ballet training as I began to answer this question. I inverted typical tambour construction and drew inspiration from the curved legs in James Krenov’s Walk-Around cabinets. The case of the cabinet is constructed with shop sawn veneers. Each tambour has a rabbet making it so that as the doors are opened and the tambours are moved along the curves, no canvas is exposed. The tambours are adhered to canvas using rabbit hide glue, which allows for the most elasticity as the tambours turn a tight radius. The engineering of the tambour doors was complex and required extensive mock-up and template creation. I think of this cabinet as kinetic sculpture: figuring out how to make the opening of the doors move so that they then become the back of the cabinet was central to my process.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.