Meet My Newest Box - Metamorphose

I've been working on this newest box for several months now, writing to share some images and introduce you to her.

I had the idea a while back to build a box with no sides or back - just an open structure that supports 6 drawers. I fiddled with the concept for a while until I finally settled on a design I thought would work.

Here are the machined parts laid out on a shop work table. The wood is Peruvian Walnut (Juglans neotropical). It's in the same botanical family as North American walnut (Juglans nigra) but more uniform in color.

If you are counting, there are 46 mortise & tenon joints along with 8 half-lap joints to be glued up.



The glue up needed to proceed in partial steps as there is not enough working time on the glue to assemble the box all at once.

Here I'm gluing up the bottom rail to an already assembled side. The 'open structure' I envisioned is coming into form.



And here she is done - Metamorphose (more on the name in a bit). The drawer fronts are Birdseye Maple (Acer saccharum). I made the drawer sides and backs using the same Peruvian Walnut so the eye is greeted with a uniform structure color contrasted to the beautiful maple drawer fronts.



Pulling forward a drawer reveals the traditional hand-cut (saw and chisel) dovetail joinery I use.



The pulls are a lamination of sterling silver between two pieces of Peruvian Walnut. I shape them with a jeweler's saw and attach them to the drawer fronts with a mortise & tenon joint.

You can see that I lined the drawer bottoms with brown ultra-suede to complement the Peruvian Walnut color.



I purchased the sterling silver bar (14 gauge @1" x 6") when silver was around $75/ounce, and it cost me nearly $160 for enough to build this box. Crazy!

And now - for her name:

This is the only box I've ever built where you can remove a drawer and the piece remains coherent. Your eye can 'see through' the open structure so it actually gives sort of an oddball artistic look to have a drawer removed.



I was going to name the box 'Skeleton', but my wife and her friends thought that was a terrible idea.

We discussed potential names for a while when I finally hit upon the fact that this box can change its visual character by removing a drawer or two.

It is able to under go a metamorphism, so to speak. I reviewed various ways to conjugate that word and came up with Metamorphose as her name.

One final look - with 2 drawers removed:



I hope you enjoyed the story behind this newest box of mine. Thanks for reading!