Plans and Alternatives: George Nakashima and Industrial Chic

So for those of you fine individuals who have read my previous post describing a miniaturized Japanese garden I will have to break your most beautiful hearts. I’m veering away from this idea mostly because I don’t want to have a giant 4 square foot Japanese garden fountain thing in my house serving no greater purpose. As an alternative, I plan on keeping more closely with my first project and making a thing out of wood that will encourage me to read more; a bedside reading table. I decided on this because I want a table next to my bed upon which I can put the books I am currently reading or rather my kindle that I’m still not sure about. specifically, I want a double leveled small table with a movable reading light. I want the table to be small enough that I can only store a few books and not let it become a surface upon which to deposit my pocket refuse (i.e. lighters, receipts, rodent bones, brass knuckles) .

My primary inspiration for this table comes from the work of George Nakashima an american woodworker who uses cross section slabs of trees whose natural edges have not been machined away. I would ideally like to create a table much like this using circular cross sections of a tree to create the naturally round layers. I then ideally would like to use joinery to connect the levels to legs that I would also create by hand from wood.

As someone who has next to no woodworking experience this is a fairly daunting project and I am willing to make compromises mostly on the joinery and legs. If I find that processing the wooden slabs requires more time than initially planned I will replace the wooden legs with pipe legs giving the project more of an industrial chic aesthetic.

Furthermore, I will also be including a movable light fixture that will be long enough to provide light to me from a more centralized location over my bed. I would like this part of the piece to be double jointed and hinged allowing full control of the arm. This I may make from scratch from copper pipe or I may also just buy a prefabricated lighting fixture and modify it to suit my needs