ARTS & CRAFTS DRESSER

Gorgeous quartersawn white oak with wenge accents.

SHOP OWNER: HC "Chico" Sakman

LOCATION: Victoria, BC, Canada

The people who bought my spec-made armoire a couple of years ago commissioned this piece. They wanted a matching dresser, so I came up with this design. They requested one top row of small drawers and below them, larger drawers of equal size. On the top row, the knob plates are inlayed, the rest of the handles are just surface mounted.

The end panels are gorgeous curly quartersawn white oak veneer; the rest of the visible wood is quartersawn solid white oak. All of the inlayed accent wood is wenge. The inside web frames, carcass, and drawer backs is Eastern hard maple.

The drawer sides are Pacific yew, which takes very high polish and glides very nicely in the drawer openings. I cut the half blind dovetails on a Leigh jig; the backs have narrow pin, hand-cut dovetails with a table saw. Sliding dovetail and through mortise & tenon joinery are carcass features.

The top, which is spectacular, is three board, breadboard construction with six wenge butterflies. Unfortunately, glaring sunshine prevented me from capturing it in a digital image.

The finish is many layers and was very labor intensive. It looks like it's been lightly fumed, although it's a combination of naphtha stain, two coats with two different diluted solutions, garnet shellac, hand rubbed varnish, dark glaze, and black wax (except the top). In these pictures, it looks much lighter in color than it actually is.