Loch Coffee Table

I began the Loch series a couple of years ago. Loch means ‘hole’ in German, and the concept for the series was to take a solid volume and remove material by sculpting out areas not essential to the minimal engineering of the form. For this project, I decided to use softwoods to emphasize the lightness of the material and foreground the strong grain patterns of the gymnosperm species. For the coffee table, I began with the idea of a solid volume with two opposing holes that grow larger until there is only a thin, bone-like structure remaining. Once I had decided on the dimensions of the glass top, I was able to figure out the proportions of the base, and I began sculpting plaster mock-ups. By the third or fourth iteration, I arrived at an overall shape that felt right.

I then scaled up the proportions to life size and began milling and gluing up the pieces of Western Cedar. The gluing process took several days. A challenge with many of my glue-ups is making sure that I have adequate material to sculpt the eccentric curves and angles while, at the same time, accounting for the practical aspects of the clamping process, as stacked-lamination relies solely on glue for bonding. This was indeed the case with this piece, since the angles were quite extreme. Once the lamination was complete, I sculpted the final form using hand-carving tools.