Madrone Maybe

I spent the day sitting in a chair that rolls around, looking at the wood.  And flipping the wood front to back.  Took some photos, cut them up in Photoshop and made the piece of furniture that way.  Thinking I might need one more slightly different species.
Madrone ranges from Vancouver Island down to Central California.  Hugs the coast all the way.
Native Americans ate the berries, used them in cider, made medicinal tea from the bark, leaves and bark used to treat various low scale aliments. 
I have had this large slab of Madrone for years sitting in my wood museum.  It's twisted all to hell.  Madrone is apparently hard to dry without lots of waste.  I'm thinking though with some finesse applied that I can get it flat and straight.
The color might really look nice next to the Eucalyptus...a darker red but in the same family.

Iron Bark Kimono

9ish years ago I decide that for a wedding I'm attending in Italy I needed to stand apart from the rest of the wedding attendees.  You know, every man would be wearing some western style suit and I had to be different. Through some friends I contacted a seamstress/artist to make me a kimono (and a custom shirt) to wear.
She and I went fabric shopping together and we spent quite a bit of time designing and talking about it.  She meticulously hand stitched it together with the finest of stitches.  Very cool.
The wedding attendee's are being seated and like the very last of them taking their seats are a big family all dressed in traditional African garb, totally colorful and beautiful and pretty much took the thunder out of the kimono.
 
 Since then the seamstress/artist have been trading work back and forth.

This will be the third piece of furniture I've built for her (and this one is destined for the husband).

Iron Bark Eucalyptus.  Just having arrived in the studio from the Marin jaunt.

This morning I lightly ran them through the planer so the grain and sweep of how the tree grew can start to dialogue with me.

I'll try and take you through the build of it.  But right now, I'm just at the looking and listening stage.

Staying Here Stain There

Stayed Here

Stained Here

Stay There

Stain There