In the near future, I'll be building a sliding panel similar to what Ron Stewart did here. In my case, I thought I'd try to make the panel a sort of art piece. I've been enamored of the stained glass of Frank Lloyd Wright, and I'll be trying to emulate one of his designs with veneer parquetry. The particular panel is from a triptych from the Coonley Playhouse, with the theme of "balloons and confetti."
This is a pattern I dabbled with years ago as an inlay in the deck and hull of a kayak I was building at the time. It feels a bit nostalgic to be revisiting the FLW stained glass pattern again.
Here are some of the few construction photos I have that show the inlays.
For this project, I'll be doing a somewhat more faithful rendition of the pattern, working from measurements from a photo scaled to the desired width. The proportions of my panel are not the same as the stained glass panel, so I will need to shorten the design a bit. That shouldn't be a big problem since there's a lot of "whitespace" at the bottom. What would FLW say?
I've never done parquetry before, so this should be interesting.
That's going to look awesome Ross! What are your plans for getting the colors? Natural and some dyeing or will you use paints as well (the white areas)?
Thanks, Splinter. It looks good in my head, but we'll see how it turns out. With really zero experience with parquetry, there will definitely be a learning curve. I've got photos queued-up for the next post, so I've made some progress.
I have some sheets of dyed veneers (poplar, I believe) that I had planned for a Mondrian-style project, but decided to step-up the complexity with the FLW stained glass pattern. For the background, I'm using bleached obeche. For the "lead", I'm using fumed oak.
The only unmodified whites I've ever found are holly or aspen. I've tried oak for long narrow strips before but was frustrated by it's uncanny ability to break along the grain. Smaller scale I've had success with steel-gray dyed maple. Hardest part was with the stuff I dyed myself. Took some time to figure out how to get 100% depth so the wood didn't go "native" after some sanding. I'd bet all your purchased dyed veneer is at 100% so you can skip that worry.
Splinter - The oak has been troublesome, but I'll stick with it for this project. If I do something similar again, I'll definitely look for other options. Yes, the purchased dyed woods are colored all the way through.
