Naughty (Knotty) Refined Rustic White Oak & Black Walnut China Hutch, Antler Handles, Antique Glass

this project has been “SOLD”.

If you would like something similar, please email me at mark@decoustudio.com

You can see more of this project at my website

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Also, if you would like to see the matching table and chairs, go here:

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And the prototype art carved chair I built from this commission project:

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Update of 1-18-2008: I added some more of the photos I had of this piece

My niche seems to be understanding the client, and using that knowledge to design a piece of functional-art that expresses who they are.

There is a lot of my own inspiration in a piece, but I am careful to make sure that the client’s personality is expressed as the first priority. After all, without them, I’d be sitting at a desk again in the corporate jungle, drying up.

Note: If you like the things sitting on the shelf in the studio photos of Hutch,

1. The Flute I made and is posted here
2. The powder horns I made and are posted here
3. The maple and walnut music box I also built, and will post that someday, maybe.
4. Turned Square Walnut Platter, another project for a future posting.
5. The mahogany turned Communion Cup with Gold Guilding is another project for a future posting someday.

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Project Story:
This was a very involved, labor intensive project. Between the knotty and figured solid wood panels, and the carving, this piece took me just over 530 hours to build. There is no plywood in this cabinet, the door and drawer fronts, as well as the solid resawn back panels are knotty and burled white oak, the type of wood that I most often throw into the woodstove, as it is too time consuming to work with. The side panels of the base and top units, are of wormy white oak, including the carved panels on the sides of the hutch. The drawer boxes are dovetailed walnut, with knotty white drawer fronts, using one board that runs the grain through continuously from one drawer to the next. The back of the unit is resawn solid wood panels.

My commissioned goal on this project was to use figured and knotty boards for as much of the details as possible. The big knotty board between the top of the base and the bottom of the upper hutch, in the middle of the panels was the genisus of this idea. After speaking with the customer over several meetings, they were having a difficult time selecting a wood type.

Then, they saw this one Kansas White Oak board with a huge 8” diameter branch knot in the middle of it, that I had laying around my shop. I had planned to make a wall clock face out of it someday to use the beautiful figured knotty board in a special location. It was the first board I ran across my Grizzly 12”x80” Spiral Carbide Tooth Jointer as a practice board. the customer liked the look of it so much, that she decided to have the cabinet, and matching table and chairs built from White Oak, using as many knotty pieces of wood as I could find.

With that major decision behind us, I was off and running. I went to my wood supplier, Sam Kellogg in Garden Plaine, KS, and bought a whole bunch of boards that were rejects and had been passed over by other buyers. With that pickup load of White Oak, I went home and started the work. After carefully planing down so many knotty and burled boards from 4/4 rough to 1/4” finished thickness, I now have in mind to buy the 20” Grizzly Surface Planer with the same Spiral Carbide Teeth that my jointer has.

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The front lettering is carved in a raised relief style, and was selected by the customer. I asked them to come up with a phrase of a length that I could fit on the board that they wanted to speak to every visitor to their home. I suggested they pick something that expressed who they truly are as people.

Here is the photo of the Kansas Flinthill Prairie hills that I took that I used for the inspiration for the carved hills in the background of the carved letter board.

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The left side hutch carving is a representation of the customer’s house and oak tree sitting in their front yard.
Here is the Original Photo I took. I used this photo as a reference when creating the artwork for the carving.

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The right side hutch carving is of a stone arch bridge on a river close to the customer’s home.

Here is my photo of the bridge. I used this photo as a reference when creating the artwork for the carved panel.

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I used the same White Oak for the Secondary Wood, and Walnut for the drawer boxes.

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After the client saw the walnut top in her house for a few months, she decided that she would rather have matching White Oak tops. So, the walnut was removed, and is now sitting in my shop awaiting another inspiration. Also, I was asked to replace the Deer Antler Shed door and drawer handles with Forged Black Iron handles. Oh well. I still like it best with the walnut and antlers. Maybe somebody else will let me use those elements someday in another “Naughty” (Knotty) piece.

Here is the China Hutch in the Client’s home after the revisions:

Here is a wider shot with the matching chair and table set in the view:

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Here are some Progress Photos, just to prove that I built this all myself:

I started by building the base unit on the work bench. I used a strange type of post and beam construction method that I devised on some Arts & Crafts pieces I built before this. All of the joinery is mortise and tenon, pegged with walnut pegs.

Here is a closer view of the side of the base cabinet. The panels are resawn and book matched. When I get to it, I will butterfly the glue joint with walnut butterfly keys. When the customer went with me to get the wood (his pickup was more road worthy) we were picking through about 3,000 board foot of quartersawn white oak, and rift sawn white oak. Our goal was to find boards with character, flaws, burls, knots, and other problems that I could work with. We found three boards that had a lot of worm holes in them. We both looked at each other, and said, “Yea, that’s the ticket.” Were were sad to only find the three boards, but I decided that I could use them for the panel boards on the top and bottom units. In the upper section of the Hutch, the worm holes are cool looking at night when the inside lights are turned on. It sort of looks like a star constellation pattern, and since they are bookmatched, the patterns roughly mirrior each other.

Here is a side panel of the base unit after the finish was applied.

Here is a similar photo of the side, after I removed the deer antler door handles and replaced them with the Forged Iron black handles.

Once the base unit was assembled, I started on the top hutch. Using the same methodology of beams and posts to assemble the frame. Inside of the frame, I will fill it with solid wood resawn boards, all cut from the knotty and burled white oak lumber.

Here I am showing the progress on the lettering. I start with a free hand routering around the letters, removing all of the wood, except the letters. After the letters have a background, I work on carving away the background, by adding the rolling hills and trees, to make it look like Flinthills Prairie terrain. This board was too long for my carving booth, so I made a small hood out of plywood scraps and attached my Grizzly dust collector to it. It works really well to keep the breathable dust to a minimum.

I am showing here the process of carving the Side Panels. This artwork is the one with the Walnut Tree and the Customer’s House. I start off by taking a photograph of the area. Then, I convert the photograph into a concept that I can carve, adding elements, or taking out details to get the look I want. What I am after here is inspired by the late-Birger Sandzen, a famous Kansas Painter. I am trying to catch the prairie wind’s effect on everything, such as the trees and grass. After transferring the pattern to the wood, I use many power and hand tools to carve out the picture. Shown here is the first step, the free hand routering of the background. I have shaded with a pencil all of the background that will be removed with the router. Notice all of the worm holes in the carving blank. This was difficult to work around, but they added a rustic impression to the carving that I wouln’t have gotten another way. The Sandzen-Style of artwork is impressionistic, and thick, and wild, so that is what I am trying to do with the wood carving.

After the finish and airbrushing, here is a bad photograph of the final carving:

Here is the finished bridge carving. This bridge was a real chore for me, and pushed my abilities to their breaking point. When I was trying to figure out what to carve for the side panels. I had gone around the Flinthills and took photographs of many of the local icons. I converted those photos into a set of sketches that I let the customer look through to select their two favorite ones for the carvings. In that process, the kids and I were driving by this old Bridge at Clements, KS, and stopped to take a photo with them on the bridge. I stepped around and took some other photos, and then converted one of them into a sketch for the customer packet. I didn’t anticipate that they would like the bridge, so I didn’t really put a lot of thought into how I would carve it. Low, and behold, that is the one they picked. Ok, now I have to figure out how to carve it. I ended up carving the grout lines in the limestone rock with a small Dremel Burr, and then airbrushed the shadowing and mildew on the rocks. When it was all done, I was thrilled with how it came out, but there were quite a few hours there where I was overwhelmed with it all. I learned a lot in the process, and this bridge has helped me carve other things since that I couldn’t have done before.

If you want to learn more about these steps I use to carve, I did a tutorial from another project here:

Carving of the Panels Blog

Since I build one stick at a time, there is a lot of trial and error, and put it together and take it apart, in my construction method. In essence I am building a prototype for the customer. I don’t have detailed drawings, just some sketches to work out joinery details, and enough to get customer approvals. It isn’t very efficient at times, but I prefer to work on the fly, it is sort of exciting to be scratching my head all the time. I also all just don’t enjoy drafting enough to sit and detail out all of the project before hand. Also, I have found that when I do detail it out, I stumble onto something I like better as I’m working the wood, and I am then reluctant to change anything. I’m trying to learn to work as an artist, not an engineer, and working on the fly and making tough decisions helps me rely more on inspiration, and not on material and pre-planned efficiencies. My “decide on the fly” method is great for adding elements, or changing the plans as I go along and something more interesting comes to mind. Also, I have found that I get better, and faster with each project, but I still have a lot to learn.

Here I have added the vertical dividers in the front. The center section of the Upper Hutch will have shelves, but no door. This idea is to make the center of the cabinet look like an art showcase, while the shelves behind the glass doors will be for storing dinner ware.

This a strange photo looking up into the top of the Upper Hutch. I recessed the pocket lights into panels made from resawn white oak. I wanted to separate the heat from the solid wood top that would go on, and also give it some venting, while making the lights easy to change out should a transformer go out. These transformers seem to only last a couple of years, so I make them easy to get to for replacement.

Here is one final photo showing the drawer box being glued up. I try very hard to make my drawer boxes look like a customer maker built them. People are so familar with factory dovetails from kitchen cabinet factories, that I work to make sure that when they pull out a drawer, they are awed by the difference in quality, function, and appearance. Using beautiful walnut for the wood, and dovetailing all four corners is one way that I communicate that message. The other way is not to use factory made drawer slides. In this case, I had to, as that is what the customer wanted, but they allowed me to use the under-drawer type so that they didn’t spoil the look of the drawer sides. In other projects, I have used historic style drawer operation methods, to avoid the use and look of the factory drawer slide hardware units.

I took this Hutch and matching table and chair set to the Western Design Conference gallery show in Cody, WY September 2006, as my judged entry piece. I didn’t win anything.
www.westerndesignconference.com

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Here is the posting with the Dining Table
Here is the posting with the Dining Chairs
Here is the Prototype Chair posting

thanks for looking,
Mark DeCou
www.decoustudio.com

The good photos are credited and owned by Trey Allen, Wichita, KS www.treyallen.com

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Want to See More of my Furniture Work?:
If you go to my Mark DeCou Website you will find that I have not updated my website in quite some time. I realize that I need to invest in improving my website, but until that is accomplished, here are some more Lumberjocks related lilnks with updated postings of my furniture work, sorted into categories. Thanks for your interest in my work, and your patience with my website.

Arts and Crafts, Mission Style Related Projects:

1. Arts & Crafts Entry Table; with Carved Oak Leaves
2. Arts & Crafts Orchid Stand w/ Wine Bottle Storage
3. Arts & Crafts Style Morris Inspired Chairs
4. Arts & Crafts Display Top Coffee Table
5. Arts & Crafts Style Inspired End Table Set
6. Arts & Crafts Style Inspired Prairie Couch
7. Table Lamps
8. Arts & Crafts Carved Entertainment Center
9. Mission Entertainment Center

Church & Worship-Art Related Projects:

1. Carved Communion Table
2. Carved Roll Top Sound Equipment Cabinet
3. Fancy Church Side Altars
4. Processional Cross
5. Fancy Speaker's Lectern
6. Church Hymn Number Board
7. Communion Chalice (Cup) and Paten

Art-Furniture Related Projects:

1. Sam Maloof Inspired Walnut Rocker
2. Original Art Carved Tilt Front Desk, inspired by Birger Sandzen
3. Natural Edge; Nakashima Inspired Coffee Table
4. Decoratively Painted Box End Tables
5. Birch China Cabinet for Cut Glass Collection

Rustic, Western, Cedar Log, and Cowboy Related Projects:

1. Naughty (Knotty) Refined Rustic White Oak & Black Walnut China Hutch
2. A Kansa Indian and Buffalo Accent Art-Chair
3. Refined Rustic Dining Chairs
4. Refined Rustic Dining Table
5. Cowboy-Western Style Suitcase/Luggage Support Racks
6. Fun With Cedar Logs #1; Sitting Stool
7. Fun With Cedar Logs #2; Coat/Hat/Spur Rack
8. Fun With Cedar Logs #3; Western Style Hat/Coat Rack
9. Fun With Cedar Logs #4; Entryway Stool

Outdoor Furniture Related:

1. Kennebunkport Style Adirondack Chair
2. Outdoor Garden Wedding Arbor
3. Outdoor Project: Cedar Wood Double Settee

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Still Want to See more of my work?

Start with each of these links, and they will take you to other organized lists of my other niche products:

1. Custom Knives

1. Custom Walking Canes and Walking Sticks

1. Artisan Hat Making Tools

(Note: Text, Photos, Carving Artwork, and Project Design are protected by copyright M.A. DeCou 1-18-208)

-- Mark DeCou - Kansas Flint Hill's Artisan