Custom Elm Dining Table in Concord
Custom Elm Dining Table in Concord
Here at Cannon Hill, we never lose sight of the fact that we’re lucky to get to work with the caliber of materials that we do. Whether we’re making a live-edge dining table, using reclaimed wood in a coffee table, or any of the other sorts of custom furniture that we build, the wood itself has stunning aesthetic value even aside from the furniture it’s going to become. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the live-edge slabs that come into our shop on a weekly basis.
The two live edge wood slabs that went into this custom dining table are both American elm, and they’re perhaps noteworthy for their color. Most often, elm – both English and American – comes to us in rich, tawny or ruddy brown tones. We love elm because it’s a joy to work with and because it has beautiful grain patterns and distinctive figure. As soon as this slab hit our shop, it was an attention grabber; rather than those more typical caramels, this one was a pale blonde, almost along the lines we’d expect to see in a maple slab.
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That light straw color was a perfect complement to the newly-renovated, Concord, MA farmhouse in which it now sits. With ample sunlight streaming into the cozy dining nook, this table fits beautifully in the decor of the home, which is distinctive and well-composed as well as subtle. It’s a design you won’t find anywhere else, built with care and attention to detail that reveal new elements the closer you look.
This base for this particular custom live edge dining table is the product of Cannon Hill’s collaborative design process, in which ideas flow freely, and solutions generate iteratively. Here, the goal was to create a dramatic piece that had elements of contemporary and traditional styling. In this case, the cube base offered the former, and the slab itself the latter.
A build like this requires no small amount of skill, technique and preparation – and Dave did a fantastic job on it. The base comprises four panels, cut from a single slab and glued end-to-end to create what is essentially a box. Because the sections are all simply adjoining segments of one slab, the grain flows continuously through all four sides, starting and then ending in what is now the back-left corner. We use the technique frequently in our custom waterfall tables, and it relies upon careful planning, precise cutting, and well-executed glue-ups.
Every stage of a custom furniture project at Cannon Hill reflects the care and consideration that goes into our work. From the word “go” we’re bringing our expertise to bear on each decision, and each moment in the piece. We want our clients to get furniture that reflects their vision, so we let them drive the design process; we’ll occasionally insist on a certain element, or overwhelmingly recommend against another, but only when experience and knowledge tell us something needs to change.
