What Catches Your Eye?

When you first see a piece of wooden furniture, or any type of woodworking project, what is the first thing that catches your eye?  Are you drawn to the grain of the wood?  Or is it the style of the piece that catches your eye?  Or do you immediately check out the workmanship of the piece?

I love the grain lines of a figured wood and, when finished properly, how they draw you in and almost mesmerize you.  Quilted maple is one of my favorite woods to see in a piece.  It forms a pattern and yet at the same time is completely random.  It is but one of the ways God shows his artistic hand in nature.   Its beauty can evoke a sense of awe and wonder.

The style of a piece can also induce an emotional response.  Sometimes, the response is favorable,  and sometimes not so favorable.  Everyone has their own interpretation of what good style is.  Some people admire the artistic curves of a contemporary piece, while others prefer the the straight lines of a mission or arts & crafts piece.

The workmanship of a piece can certainly add to or detract from the beauty of a piece.  Great workmanship is at the same time visible and invisible.  It is visible in the sense that you can tell that it took someone with great skill in order to create something as beautiful as this.  It is invisible in the sense that you can see very few, if any, flaws upon close inspection.

I often find myself paying careful attention to all three with style and wood grain being the first things that I look at.  Even if I do not care for the style or the wood selection, I will still check out the workmanship involved.  When it comes to looking at the workmanship, I try to discern whether it was made by a person or on an assembly line.  The way that the wood grain is running can be a sign of good workmanship.  I look for slight imperfections in dovetails or a piece of inlay that doesn’t quite fit perfectly.  I look for these things not to criticize, but to admire the hard work that went into it.

So, how does all of this help me design a beautiful woodworking project?  What I try to do is to learn something from the woodworking pieces that I see.  I ask myself questions like; “Does the grain of the wood add to or detract from the design?”  “Is the style of the piece pleasing and is it right for the setting that it is in?”  “How would I have gone about making this piece so that my workmanship would be both visible and invisible?”  All of these things will directly and indirectly affect how I design and build a project.

Wood grain will be in the back of my mind while designing something.  Once I have a CAD model of my piece, I will sometimes do some photo renderings to get an idea of how different grains or woods will look.   Renderings allow me to experiment with the look of a project in a very short amount of time and help me to select the best woods for it.

Style, of course, will directly affect a design that I am working on.  When deciding on the style of a piece there are several things to consider.  The style always has to be pleasing to not only my eye, but also the clients eye.  It also needs to look right in the setting that it will be in.  A contemporary styled chair would look out of place in a setting where all of the rest of the furniture is mission styled.

“How” I am going to build something will also affect my design to some extent.  I certainly would not want to design something that was impossible for me to build.  Knowing my own capabilities and “potential” capabilities helps prevent this.  By “potential” capabilities, I mean that I might sometimes have to make a new jig or template in order to accomplish something.

As you can see, there are several things to think about when you start designing a piece that you want to be eye catching.