I have been playing finger-style acoustic guitar for many years and I am dreaming of building my own guitar one day. I still have to learn a lot of skills for that. In the meantime, I make objects that are related to playing the guitar. Starting with wall mounts for my guitars and here’s the sequel: a music stand.
I ignored Louis Sullivan’s principle (form follows function); with this object, function followed form. And unlike previous projects, for which I worked out the design precisely to begin with, the details emerged gradually. An interesting voyage.
The idea
It all started with felled apple trees from Zelfplukboomgaard ’t Straatje. I was allowed to select some reasonably straight specimens to “make something beautiful out of it”. The trunks lay under our carport for a year before I did anything with them.
After a visit to the studio of interior builder and artist Ranko van Tricht, the idea arose to create an organic design for a music stand in the shape of a dragonfly. The wings as a sheet music holder and the apple stem as a body.
The wings
Initially I wanted to make the wings from wood and epoxy. A fellow furniture maker at the Cooperation pointed me to an article in the German magazine Holzwerken. It was explained how you can make an openwork butterfly wing from veneer. That set the tone.
Below is the design of the wing; the grey parts of jatoba veneer, the blue parts of maple veneer and the white holes are completely open. This can easily be done with an electric scroll saw.
De tail
The shape of the tail has been determined by the shape of the apple stem: crooked and gnarled. First I removed the bark. Quite a job, but worth it. A beautiful wood pattern emerged under the bark, a mix of white and brown.
De body, the foot and the balance
For the body of the caterpillar I used a slightly thicker trunk. The head is carved with the gouges that once belonged to my father – I must have inherited his love for woodworking. Wood carving is a craft in itself, but with knowledge of the properties and peculiarities of wood I did not do too badly. The first attempt was not good at all -too primitive, not a nice shape- but I’m quite satisfied with the second attempt. The body sits firmly on the tail with a mortise-and-tenon connection.
To make the sheet music readable, the music stand has to tilt backwards by about 15º. I could make good use of a thick and heavy mahogany beam that was a left-over from a previous project. This beam serves as a foot and ensures that the whole is stable.
The wings are mounted in a recess on the body with brass screws and a cover plate. Of course my logo could not be missing there. If this object ever needs to be transported, the wings can be dismantled; the maple veneer is wafer-thin and quite vulnerable.
