Art Deco Room Divider & Storage
The “Gershwin Daybed,” made in 1928 in the USA, provided the original inspiration for this piece.
I’ve recently begun on a massive month’s long commission for a client in San Francisco of a beautiful art deco piece - or rather, a series of seven pieces that fit together into a coherent whole. The original inspiration for this came from a classic art deco piece, the Gershwin Day Bed, but updated to allow for a lot more storage (and to replace the bourgeois day-bed concept with something a bit more practical: a bench with built-in storage).
I’m super excited to work on this piece, both because the client and I have a similar design aesthetic, and because there are elements of the design that will allow me to grow my skillset (and my portfolio).
Fortunately, my past projects prepared me well for this, in identifying and working with relevant materials outside the standard woods and composites. For instance, I gained experience with the light tube that forms a central element in the lamp piece in this earlier lamp I made for myself; I developed the relationship with the high-quality LED supplier on this artist collaboration; and I have practice with some of the metal trim work that is key to the art deco look from some earlier stained glass projects.
The acrylic tube is designed specifically for lighting applications, and is relatively easy to cut.
These LEDs have a number of interchangeable driver options to provide some design and control flexibility for a complex project; original post.
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The zinc and steel frame border common in stained glass was one of a few design options presented for some of the metal trim work; original post.
I’m sure I’ll have many more tales from this project, but as I’m excited to share the design, and also imagine I’ll be buried in sawdust in the workshop before I can escape to write another blog post, I figured I’d share these pretty renderings now!
Front of the piece; note the angled grain on the walnut door faces, the geometric lacewood veneer pattern, and the metal trim around the platform and the lamp. The shelves with darker wenge trim are fixed, whereas those with walnut trim are adjustable. The buffet up against the wall has a pair of tambour doors, like a roll-top desk, and the bench has two lids that lift up for extra storage.
The back continues the themes from the front, with the geometric veneer pattern and metal trim around the bases.
An excerpt from the detailed drawings made to support the overall project which may give a better overview of how the seven pieces fit together as a bench, wall divider, and storage system.