Found this on one of my favorite design blogs today.
Being rather terrified of heights, I can imagine very few ways to have dinner that are less appealing.
My family house used to have two enormous silver maple trees in the front yard. One of them had to be taken down a few years ago and my father had the usable wood milled. The color and grain of the wood is very striking, and I decided to make my follow-up to the Square-1 design out of this sugar maple. Not only would these two end tables serve as a prototype for the next iteration of the "Square" series, it would also be an homage to my childhood home.
I've made two tables, unofficially dubbed "river" and "tree" due to the color patterns. They're actually not the easiest things to photograph with a digital camera; there is so much pink and red in the wood that the whole photo tends to get tinted pink or orange. In trying to compensate for that hue, photo-editing software tends to wash out the colors of the photo. The result is such that the darker parts of the wood are a bit pinker in reality, and the lighter parts of the wood are a bit more white. I may be an amateur designer, but I'm no photographer!
I do love the color and grain of the Square-2 design, but I must admit that Square-1 was easier to work on; Black paint covers almost any mistake!
Recently I've been using my spare time creatively and (I like to think) productively. As one of my many interests is interior design, I took the time to brush up on AutoCAD and make some designs. Not only does this help me regain long-unused skills, but it results in an actual physical object! Quite the accomplishment, these days.
In any case, here is the result, dubbed "Square-1" and first in a series. It's the very first of its type and pretty much a prototype, but I gave it as a gift and it is serving quite well in its capacity as a coffee table. Have a look: