In my two-semester long furniture class, I had the pleasure of designing and crafting a few different pieces. The first, a donation to the Irving MA Library, was a kid-sized stepping stool. Cut from a raw slab of red cedar I made the steps, and the shortened treads of white maple.

The next project was a hand build, eliminating all power tools in the making. I made a 5 sided box with splint- miter joints, and a separate sliding lid. Painted red with old-fashioned Milk Paint, I made the box out of poplar wood, with a smooth and oil stained birchwood lid.

The final project was to build a furniture piece of our choosing. I decided to design a sea-creature rocking animal, and eventually came up with the rocking shark. An animal that has been notoriously painted as a scary and killer monster of our oceans, I wanted to give sharks as a whole, a better representation, as they are an essential being of the ocean’s biodiversity. The body of the shark and the bicycle-inspired seat were constructed out of poplar wood, and the rocking components, both the wave and the vertical panels were cut from white maple. The eyes of the shark as well as the kelp and the scallop shell illustrations were all etched by hand with a wood-burner.