Anglo-Japanese Style Nightstand
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This was one of the most interesting projects recently – a nightstand, a companion piece to my long-standing project, a bed in the Aesthetic Movement and Anglo-Japanese style. Generally, the style that the Herter Brothers developed in 19th-century New York. In one of my videos about this project, I already talked a bit about this style. And in the next video, I talked in more detail about the finished project.
So, for my client I decided to make a small series in this style, there aren’t many original pieces, but all of them are beautiful in their own way. A cabinet and an ottoman are in the plans for now.
The nightstand has many notable details: carving on the legs (black hornbeam, by the way), marquetry on the side panels and the table drawer, a working lock in the cabinet, casters with rubber rims. The original top was made of marble, but I made it from a very durable type of plaster.
The most difficult stage in the work, oddly enough, was assembly. I changed the order of operations and redid it several times. My favorite part was making the lock and key, the lock thickness is about 0.7 mm, I didn’t increase the thickness so that, first, it would be easier to install, and second, to stay more or less in scale. The casters are standard, except I added rubber rims, grooves were made in the brass casters themselves for them. It seems like a small detail, but it looks less ordinary.
The prototype nightstand is in the New York MET museum
