Project Title: Radius Cabinet
Location: Hampshire
Wood Species: ENGLISH OAK & BROWN OAK
Product Description
The Project
The design and construction of this Sideboard fulfills a long held ambition of James Ryan, who comments, “I have always felt that the silhouette or the space which furniture occupies is key to its attractiveness and appeal. With the Sideboard, I wanted to create a seamless curved and blended shape, which would feel soft to the touch and pleasing to the eye.”
The front of the cabinet is compound curved which means it is curved from every viewing direction. In order to achieve this, I invented a combination of techniques. I wanted the method of construction to show and furthermore dictate the visual appeal of the cabinet, so chose to alternate two different coloured timbers for the layers to accentuate the effect. English white oak and rich brown oak were used; brown oak being timber that has been transformed, while growing, by a beefsteak fungus. The effect varies from tree to tree but in this case it is a deep even brown.
In terms of functionality, the sideboard has two quarter circle end doors with adjustable shelves inside. The centre section incorporates a deep bottom drawer on metal runners for bottle storage. Above this are two conventional drawers with ¼ sawn oak drawers sides and cedar of Lebanon drawer bottoms. Lastly there is a pullout work surface just below the top.
The construction statistics for the Sideboard are interesting. The Sideboard is 180 cm wide and 50 cm deep and was built up by joining together a multitude of small precisely shaped components. The veneered top is made up of 288 individual pieces of end-grain oak joined seamlessly together. It was then inlaid with 60 metres of brown oak end grain stringing and there are over 500 small individual blocks of brown and white oak in the front of the cabinet.
Before beginning work, 72 curved profile templates had to be created and in total, over 1000 man-hours went in to making the piece. On completion, the cabinet front was perfectly smooth which I found to be too clinical, so rotary brass wire brushes were made and used to scrub the entire front to give a more feathery, tactile, open-grained effect.
The tools used to create the Sideboard ranged from hi-tech computer controlled machines to traditional hand-worked methods using an adapted wooden plane.
FURNITURE OWNER: BARNSLEY WORKSHOP
DESIGNER: JAMES RYAN
MAKER: BARNSLEY WORKSHOP
DIMENSIONS: (APPROX. WIDTH, HEIGHT, DEPTH IN CMS) 160 X 90 X 55
