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Hander Woodworking and its logo are registered trademarks of Hander Woodworking
Hander Woodworking and its logo are registered trademarks of Hander Woodworking
This writing desk, circa 1910 - 1920, was built using birch as the substrate and ribbon cut African mahogany veneer for the facings. The piece arrived at Hander Woodworking wobbly and in need of repair and refinishing. The desk was originally built to sit against a wall and, thus, the back was rough and unfinished. The client wanted to use the desk as a free standing piece, seen from all sides, so they asked Hander Woodworking to finish the back similar to the front.
In order to achieve this, new mahogany veneer needed to be glued to the back, but due to the expense of preparing the rough back boards for an expensive flitch of 1/32" ribbon sliced mahogany veneer to match the rest of the mahogany, the client decided to have a piece of Meranti (Philippine mahogany) door skin fitted and glued to the back and trimmed with custom carvings to match the carvings on the desk's front. Above is a picture of the carving blanks being applied to the already glued on Meranti door skin. After drying, the blanks were hand carved to match the front as seen in the picture below.
Redesigned Back.
Finished Back.