Casepiece Projects

Design is central to all of our curricula at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. A core assignment for students in the Furniture Intensive and the Nine-month Comprehensive is to design and build a solid-wood casepiece with a door and a drawer. Since every design is different, students in each class learn to employ a tremendous variety of machine and hand tool techniques, benefitting not only from what they do themselves, but also from what they watch their classmates take on. Pictured below are case pieces under construction by participants in our current Intensive and Comprehensive courses.

 Standing case piece made out of oak and spalted persimmon with a coopered door. As Sayer worked with instructors through the design process, he came up with this curved door to add visual intrigue and expand his skills.

 

 

 This ash case piece includes a door hung with center pivot hinge. It will have a table top like the poplar mock up pictured below.

 

 

 

 There are many ways to add personal detail. On this piece the door uses the traditional Japanese technique of kumiko. Devin was inspired to add the detail after learning it from instructor Kendrick Anderson.

 

 

 Scale, size, and proportion are critical to visual appeal.

 

 

 This cherry case piece was designed to complement a bench the student made for the hand skills segment of the course. You can see how the bench nests perfectly underneath.

 

 Angles may look subtle, but a lot of time and math goes into the joinery. 

 

The metal hardware couples with the grain of the wood to make this piece sing.  

 

 Gluing an angled piece together often requires an extra set of hands.