 |
| Detail from 'Founding Fathers writing Table' (Click Image for picture viewer) |
Silas shared his thoughts with me about his 'Founding Fathers Writing Table'. Like the Founding Fathers, Silas is a master at his vocation and has a knack for being where the action is. So when curators and fellow master woodworkers Bill Jewel and Jacques Vesery invited him to participate in the "National Treasures: History in the Making" exhibit at the Architectural Digest show (March 18 - 21, 2010) in New York City, he was ready.
"National Treasures: History in the Making"
"Bill Jewel, of Historical Woods of America, approached me about the possibility of an exhibit using American woods from the homes of the Founding Fathers. I was intrigued, but my concern was trying to make a marquetry image with a limited palette of woods that grow in Virginia."
 |
| Founding Fathers writing table (Click Image for picture viewer) |
"In my mind the piece had to reference history, yet be of a contemporary design. I opted for a writing table with a trompe l’oeil top depicting a surface that had objects of the 18th century. To make trompe l’oeil believable on a horizontal surface the objects need to be relatively flat. My starting point was paper and something being written on it with a quill pen. I chose words from the Declaration of Independence, as if Jefferson were working on a draft. I put the words “this truth” and crossed it out, writing about “these truths”. I needed some additional flat objects to fill the composition. An open envelope with a broken wax seal. Old-fashioned glasses. Brass keys."
 |
| Marquetry trompe l'oeil table top (Click Image for picture viewer) |
"The woods offered were limited in tone. The darkest wood was walnut, the lightest a creamy colored ash. The rest of the woods were somewhere in between. There were some golden tones that I thought would be successful for the brass in the glasses and the keys. To get a darker “black” for the ink and a few of the other parts I used the endgrain cut of the walnut. There was only one wood offered that had any significant figure, but in some ways it was the most important tree of all the historic woods. It was a horse chestnut tree documented as having been planted by George Washington in Fredericksburg. It was the last standing of thirteen symbolically planted by Washington between his sister’s and mother’s houses over two hundred years ago."
 |
| Marquetry with figured horse chestnut and other historic woods (Click Image for picture viewer) |
"The board I was offered was of a very limited size but I was able to cut it into veneers and cover the top surface. The fact that there was both heartwood and sapwood, and some figure along with the unusual grey color, made it ideal for the background because the plainer woods of the marquetry objects would stand out in contrast. A few years ago I had worked on the Walden Woods Piano and was challenged in a similar way to use a limited palette of woods, all from temperate forest and nothing tropical. In the Founding Fathers Writing Table the focus was even narrower, with all the woods coming from Virginia. I did use at least a little piece of all the fifteen woods that were offered."
