Shameless Gloat -- MFA exhibit

Pictures are posted at abpw.

Why, yes, I've had a piece of my woodwork on display at the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston this last week....

So, not quite an addition to the permanent collection, but SWMBO was
asked to do a flower arrangement for the annual "Art in Bloom", where
both professionals and representatives of local garden clubs are asked
to do a floral interpretation of a painting or other object in the
collection. She and a colleague did the arrangement I made the container
to her design spec.

Many thousands of people turn out for the show and it's a lot of fun to
hang back and listen to people's reactions. They did a great job with
the flowers but the box helped it to stand out. The guides are all cued
to the astonishing fact that someone's husband made the container and
the general reaction is one of shocked disbelief (who do they think
makes stuff, anyway?).

One of the ways to justify a *really* nice workshop is the ability to
produce things like custom flower containers on demand.

The main box is quilted bigleaf maple, the tori arch is fiddleback
eastern hard maple, and the base and accents are bloodwood. The box is
mitered with biscuits and all the other joints are mortise and tenon. I
used a loose tenon to join the arch to the box. The joints of course
required purchase of a dedicated mortising machine and top of the arch
was justification for a really sweet new spokeshave from L-N. ;-)

Roger