Generally, I much prefer natural wood over plastic or metal decorations. After a table was made there were a couple of offcuts of 苦苓/苦楝 Chinaberry left over. It’s a beautiful wood, speckled across with deep chocolate waves on a tawny base with some patches tending lighter towards latte. The first piece was an acute spike with a knot near the wider end and I was wondering what to do with it…
YY suggested dolphins jumping with the sun setting over a mountain, and sketched it out. The width would be perfect to hang our calendar.
I machined out notches on the back side so it could slot on to screws in the wall, and added a small hook to hold the calendar. We each drew our own dolphin directly on the wall with coloured pencils.
It seems everything electrical comes with a remote control these days, including the air conditioning and the ceiling lights in every room. AY asked for a tree to be a home for the remotes in her room, so we used a 檜木 Hinoki board that had a gash in one edge after previous miscut. I machined it in to a tree shape by aiming for a fluffy cloud with a trunk, on a base with side areas where the remote control brackets could be attached. We stained it green, oak, and blue so the grain remained visible. AY added the red apples using acrylic paint, and later added birds using stickers.
Hinoki has a very straight almost pink grain and feels much lighter than 苦楝 which, as a relative of Mahogany, is much harder and more resistant to bumps and scrapes. Three slices of 苦楝 were previously intended as oval trays for serving tea. Rounding them up and sanding smooth, they became lovely name plates for each floor: “Bugs and Books” for the lab and the library, “zzZ” for bedrooms, “一百箍” for the home-office.
The last piece of 苦楝 was shaped like the stubby tip of a sweet potato. Adding four brass hooks made it the key holder growing out of the wall!
