Thread: A tale with a twist.

Sometime during 1993 I must have filled in my details somewhere and ticked a box because I began receiving flyers about the Melbourne Timber and Working with Wood Show in the mail. My wife drew my attention to one of the categories titled 'Antique Reproductions' and suggested I should enter a piece of furniture.

I can't remember whether another flyer arrived in the mail or whether my wife reminded me but at any rate, I hadn't got around to making anything for the show. I eventually completed the requisite forms and entered a copy of a c. 1730 George II walnut bureau bookcase that I had made for myself some years prior.

My wife and I attended the opening night and the judge who delivered the awards speech made a comment along the lines of one of the entrants not having embraced the spirit of the event.

I didn't win a prize (and I didn't honestly expect to), but I was surprised when a 'Sheraton gun cabinet' won the antiques category considering there's no such thing as an antique Sheraton gun cabinet… I suppose it's no greater a crime than the 'Queen Anne TV cabinets' and 'Jacobean telephone tables' that one used to see for sale in the back pages of the weekend colour supplements.

We had a walk round and admired the other exhibits and were at the point of heading off home when we noticed a gathering round my entry. One of the judges was holding court in front of the bureau and was berating it as a badly restored original and possibly a marriage (of two separate pieces of furniture) to boot! A number of people in the small crowd were lending support to the belief and declaring it should never have been allowed in the show.

My wife and I beat a hasty retreat as I have a fine singing voice which would not have been improved with me dangling on the end of a rope.

The walnut bureau bookcase.


That Christmas, I took a few days off work to fell an English walnut tree (Juglans Regia) and prepare some timber in preparation for the next Working with Wood Show. I'm not normally a competitive or vindictive person, but I'll be damned if some naff judge with little appreciation of the category he was presiding over was going to make me look so small before the woodies of Melbourne!



With the popularisation of tea in the first half of the eighteenth century, tea tables became a necessary addition to many inventories in large houses across Britain and Europe. English tea tables followed a fairly common form being a folding square top on a rectangular frame and supported by four legs, with one or both back legs extending rearwards to support the top leaf when the table was opened up for use. When not in use, the tables would sit against a wall with the top leaf folded over the bottom one.

I decided on a storyboard with step-by-step photos and descriptions of the entire creation process to accompany my early Georgian walnut oyster-veneered tea table. I took photos at every stage of the construction, from the conversion of the tree trunk, to the making of the English oak carcass, to the making of the brass hinges and even the hand cutting of the steel screws that secured the hinges in place.

Unfortunately the storyboard had disappeared by the end of the show, but below are some photos I found in a box recently that weren't included on the storyboard.

The components for one of the English oak leaves.


One of the frame rails veneered with walnut 'oysters'.


Laying out the oysters for the upper side of the top leaf.


Veneering the under side of the top leaf. The upper side of the bottom leaf is treated in exactly the same manner. The walnut veneers were cut from the log and are about 2mm thick (in keeping with 18th century hand cut veneers).


One of the four hinge blanks cut from a sheet of authentic alloyed brass.


One of the assembled hinges awaiting final filing, buffing and ageing.


The completed tea table in the white.




The finished table.






In light of the shenanigans of the previous year, neither the table nor my pedanticism was ever going to curry favour with the judges as it was perfectly clear why I had gone to such lengths to spell everything out, but I entered the table into the 1994 Melbourne Working with Wood Show all the same. It didn't win a prize.



A related story

On the same weekend of the Melbourne Working with Wood Show we happened to be moving house. I have a very large elm cupboard that I made and in the course of moving, it ended up in the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings along with the walnut tea table due to a misunderstanding with the removers. It would have been too costly to send the removers back to retrieve the cupboard, so there it remained for the duration of the show. It won second prize.


You can read more about the prize winning elm cupboard here…
https://www.woodworkforums.com/f11/traditional-joints-glue-74377