Tracy Sigler — End Table Prototypes

I made these sometime in the summer of 2005 using only a sharpened rock and some catgut. Or at least that’s what it felt like, and in some spots it almost looks like that. Really, the conditions were not ideal. No shop, working on the back patio, on a folding banquet table, with a small assortment of hand tools. They were really intended to be prototypes and I wanted to quickly whip them out. Like most things I’ve made, I wish I had taken a little more time.

They remind me of some early nightstands/end tables by my hero George Nakashima. Except that they are plywood instead of solid walnut, use hacky dowels instead of exquisite joinery, and have fat cylindrical legs instead of elegant tapered limbs. Other than that they are just like Nakashima’s work. The truth is they have more in common with Brutalism of the 1960s and ’70s, not necessarily a bad thing. Overall I like the way they turned out.