rafter and pavement
This coffee table is my first piece completed in Los Angeles, Echo Park to be exact. It was an arduous process due to my lack of an official workshop/studio at the time of its inception, which gave me plenty of time to overthink every detail. The base is heart pine salvaged from a roof overhang I had to demo on my house in Jacksonville. The 4X6 legs were the half timbers bearing most of the load, and measured 5′ long and weighed 50+ pounds each (1/3 my body weight-taking them down, not easy). The horizontal supports were the rafter tails and much less cumbersome yet every bit as beautiful. The joinery employed is mortise and tenon, and birch doweling. The top was fashioned in my new studio and is actually brick mortar in lieu of standard concrete allowing for a thinner (1″), more manageable size. I tried to picture a young, happy couple trying to move their new 225 pound coffee table in, and it wasn’t pretty.
