Project description
We are furnishing a living room and want one piece that people will lean over and look at. The idea is a round coffee table, 900 mm across, height 420 mm, with a marquetry medallion set flush into the centre of the top. The pattern is a twelve-ray rosette about 520 mm in diameter: alternating rays running from a small dark centre outwards, with a thin double ring closing the figure and a plain field of the base veneer around it. Nothing pictorial, no flowers or birds — a geometric set that reads cleanly from standing height and still holds up when you sit down with coffee and look at it closely.
Species matter more to us than complexity. We would like the field in quartered oak or ash with a quiet straight figure, and the rays alternating between a warm reddish wood and a pale one — pear, maple, cherry, walnut, whatever you can source in matching thickness. Please choose by tone and grain direction, not just by name: the rays should catch light differently as you walk around the table, and that only happens if the grain of each segment is laid deliberately. We would rather see a small sample panel of three or four candidate pairings before you cut the full set.
On the technical side we care about the joints. Sliced veneer around 0.6 mm, all elements of the same thickness so nothing telegraphs through the finish; segments cut to a template, joints tight enough that you cannot catch them with a fingernail; no filler in the seams. The recess in the top routed to depth on a jig, the assembly taped, glued and pressed in a press or with a vacuum bag — not ironed on by hand. Substrate should be stable: a veneered MDF or plywood core with a balancing veneer on the underside, framed with a solid lipping so the edge is real wood, not exposed core. Base — three tapered solid legs with a cross rail, matt black or stained to match the darkest species in the set.
After pressing, sand the inlay flush with the field, then finish with hardwax oil or a matt lacquer — two or three coats, no gloss, no visible orange peel. Please quote separately for the top and the base, tell us how long the pressing and curing needs, and send photos of the taped assembly before it goes into the press. Delivery to the city, ground floor, no lift needed.
Species matter more to us than complexity. We would like the field in quartered oak or ash with a quiet straight figure, and the rays alternating between a warm reddish wood and a pale one — pear, maple, cherry, walnut, whatever you can source in matching thickness. Please choose by tone and grain direction, not just by name: the rays should catch light differently as you walk around the table, and that only happens if the grain of each segment is laid deliberately. We would rather see a small sample panel of three or four candidate pairings before you cut the full set.
On the technical side we care about the joints. Sliced veneer around 0.6 mm, all elements of the same thickness so nothing telegraphs through the finish; segments cut to a template, joints tight enough that you cannot catch them with a fingernail; no filler in the seams. The recess in the top routed to depth on a jig, the assembly taped, glued and pressed in a press or with a vacuum bag — not ironed on by hand. Substrate should be stable: a veneered MDF or plywood core with a balancing veneer on the underside, framed with a solid lipping so the edge is real wood, not exposed core. Base — three tapered solid legs with a cross rail, matt black or stained to match the darkest species in the set.
After pressing, sand the inlay flush with the field, then finish with hardwax oil or a matt lacquer — two or three coats, no gloss, no visible orange peel. Please quote separately for the top and the base, tell us how long the pressing and curing needs, and send photos of the taped assembly before it goes into the press. Delivery to the city, ground floor, no lift needed.
Other / Miscellaneous Cash, Bank transfer
