400 Wood Boxes

400 Wood Boxes
The Fine Art of Containment & Concealment

Softcover
205 x 205mm
352pp

R.R.P.$39.90

ISBN 1-57990-459-9

Extract from cover flap of book:

Featuring 400 outstanding works that showcase a wide range of woodworking techniques, this superb gallery celebrates the art of the wood box. Each one has been carefully chosen by renowned artisan Tony Lydgate and is presented through exquisite colour photography. Many of the designs are also shown in supplementary photos that highlight one-of-a-kind details.

Boxes are some of the familiar, commonplace items in our everyday life. Perhaps it's the very humility of this container that inspires artists and craftspeople to lavish on it all the beauty, workmanship, and ingenuity usually reserved for less ubiquitous objects. The examples that follow do exactly that.

The intricate and organic designs of Jim Christiansen, fashioned from burls of maple, black locust, and other woods, are an effort to show that this type of art comes from the earth. "All creation" says Christiansen, "is related to natural processes of birth, growth, death, and renewal."

From Glenn Elvig comes a series of whimsical, tongue-in-cheek tea boxes, incorporating pencil sharpeners, dolls, cue balls, and fishing reels, each representing a letter of the alphabet.

The fine traditional work of Roger Gifkins emphasizes the beauty of natural materials such as rosewood, satinwood, mangrove, bamboo, and ebony. Among his pieces shown here are several inspired by an eleventh-century sushi press featuring Japanese double end grain joints. Also in the fine traditional category are the designs of Robert Ingham. These include pivoting lids and highlight the appeal of finely figured woods like 4,000 year old bog oak.

Find inspiration in both practical creations - a display case, humidors, a tool chest - and almost purely sculptural pieces whose beauty far surpasses their utility. Here then are 400 reasons to believe that, sometimes, what a box showcases on the outside is as intriguing as what it conceals within

Photos: Colour

Units of measure: Imperial & Metric

Contents

Introduction

The Boxes

Acknowledgment

Index