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©2005 Yoav S. Liberman

Attn: John Everdell, 2007

Found cedar, found specimens trays (pine), reclaimed brass handles, cast iron handles.

This piece is a homage to "rejected wood" - a discarded product of the lumber industry.

I found the cedar boards in the trash bin of John Everdell. John, a designer, a woodworker and a mentor, received a shipment of beautiful Claro walnut from a lumber yard in California, from which he later built several tables. In order to protect the valuable wood from damage during shipping, it is customary to crate this top quality wood in a container made of a lesser quality lumber; defective, irregular or just inexpensive. The cedar boards that I found are a great example of this phenomenon. After re-sawing them and jointing their inner face and edges, I glued them and made the case's parts; I made the joints and drawer glides and assembled all the components together.

I got the trays from the Harvard University recycling facility. Earlier, these finger-joint pine trays housed insects and rock specimens at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Each tray/drawer received a new false front – made from the remains of the cedar boards. As for the brass handles – they were discarded by the jewelry department of the Worcester Center for Crafts.

This lumber’s diverse coloration, outstanding terrain, and sensational texture is the reason I decided to put it to the fore - to expose it to the public. It is, I believe, a rare opportunity to see what wood sometimes really looks like. When we transform lumber into boards and parts for furniture, we peel it, cut, sand and finish it. I wanted to show that sometimes this process is actually unnecessary and beauty is already there - on the surface.