Arts & Crafts Buffet
Recipe for successful design:
Steal your ideas from the best.
I
designed this buffet cabinet a couple years ago for a weekend
seminar on Arts & Crafts joinery. After the class I added a 3-D
model to the Popular Woodworking Magazine online SketchUp
collection. It was an easy way to provide detailed plans for those
in attendance. As time passed, the model rose to the top of the
collection, based on popularity.
My goal in designing it was to combine several classic elements
from the early 20th century, without building a reproduction of
any one piece in particular. I was looking to design a piece with a
contemporary feel, but was also grounded in traditional Arts & Crafts
period elements. Apparently I swiped the right details from the right
sources to make a successful piece.
The wide overhanging top with breadboard ends, the fi nger-
jointed drawer and the sculpted handles were all borrowed from
the designs of Charles and Henry Greene. The proportions of the
door stiles and rails were lifted right from the Gustav Stickley
stylebook, and the double-tapered legs are a Harvey Ellis element
turned upside down.
Equally important are the overall proportions and the rounded
edges that ease the transitions where there is a change of direction or
a change in plane. The light color of the soft maple keeps the cabinet
from looking too formal or too masculine. Absent are the elements
often seen in new pieces based on old designs. Corbels and spindles
were banished to the land of overused and misapplied design features.
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