Blistered Imbuya and Ziricote ...Mmmm!

What a fantastic wood combination.

The blistered Imbuya veneer on the tops and aprons of these tables has a nice ripple, with a very rich natural colour. It's a great wood to work with too; great spicy smell. Also handy that the trees are usually big, so one piece of veneer can usually span the whole width of one of my cocktail tables.

The Ziricote has a grain pattern that has distinct areas with different shading, separated by black lines. It reminds me of paintings by Lawren Harris and other group of 7 artists. This wood is not cheap, therefore the legs and the beading on the bottom curve of the apron is cherry actually. I developed a convincing multilayer staining technique to simulate the ziricote. This made it  possible not to charge four times the regular price for such a table. This was also necessary because it would be very difficult to find a piece of ziricote thick enough to make the legs without having checks and splits in it. It's a small tree, almost a bush, so finding desirable pieces just for the edging was a task alone. The edging around the top of the table is the a more noticeable spot for it, so it all works out well.

I've used this combo for cocktail tables (15 1/2 x 15 1/2 x 24"H), pedestal tables (12 x 12 x 28"H) and I'm currently doing a custom sized end table.

I decided to bring these two woods together in my tables because the combination has a powerful presence with a low contrast. It's not screaming, but has a subtle strength. Also, I thought it would add a masculine tone to my table collection, but as it turns out,  the women were the ones who bought these at the OOAK show last month.

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