Bandsaw Leaf

Finding the sweet spot for carvings that sell is tough. I’ll start a project, think that it’s beautiful, and then find out at a show that it sells slowly, if at all.
I do not have ” the eye of the tiger” for successful projects. Some items make more of a plash than a splash on introduction. It’s a bit perplexing too. The items can receive appreciative comments on the carving but fail to sell. With the bandsaw leaf boxes, it took a while for my slow brain to figure out what was obvious: the space for storage inside was impractically small. It was a case of a carver getting carried away with carving, but not considering the practical. Not an insignificant omission.

The first bandsaw box I remember seeing was sometime in the late sixties. They always looked kind of clunky to me, but they had popularity among the “alt culture” types of the day because they had exciting grain and “natural” curves. Cut from full-thickness log style wood, they sometimes incorporated wane and bark in their look. Unfortunately, not many of these boxes survived; the stresses of radial wood movement broke them apart, or wood expansion jammed drawers shut.
While no longer as common as they once were, the underlying concept never got abandoned. On the contrary, more experienced woodworkers continue to explore the restrictions and liberties possible.
In the nineties, I created these leaf boxes. Unfortunately, the labor involved in making the complex curves of the lower box meant that they were not too profitable. These are all that’s left of my leaf box phase.
But January and February are the months in which I contemplate, plan, entertain, and agonize over what I might be interested in carving for the rest of the year. So, I revisited the leaf box one afternoon and decided that the underlying box technique still held promise. I’ve thought of some new tricks since my initial efforts. We’ll see what comes of this.