Swiss pear, walnut, cherry 38″l x 36″h x 12″
I wanted to work with pear wood ever since I saw it used in a James Krenov cabinet in one of his seminal books on cabinetmaking, but I didn’t get around to it until about 20 years after I saw the picture. I splurged and bought two planks of Swiss pear, which sat in my lumber stash for four years before I found a use for it in this hallway table top. I didn’t want to use the pear for the under-carriage and the client liked mixed woods in a single piece, so that’s one of the reasons the piece is composed of several woods. Because the table is thin and, so, has a narrow support base, I needed some actual and some visual weight below, which led to the cherry panel and the walnut on the floor, with the main top supports reverse-tapering toward them. The cherry panel looked a little bland in the original version, so I textured it with a gouge and then burnished it.
