A Door for an Island Tree House
I meet a lot of interesting people in all the work that I do around the country and also in other countries, but this project was unique. This client lives on a little island called Nevis Island in in the West Indies and he wanted a small entry door for a house that he was building around a tree. He calls it his treehouse. The client is an architect and contractor and knew what he liked.
He had looked through my website and decided that I was the right person to do the project for him. He wanted an entry door with a realistic tree hand carved into the design along with incorporating several other plants that are part of his landscape in carved wood and utilizing my abillities with art glass, a technique I developed by carving the glass, painting it with colored powdered glass, and then fusing in my kiln. What the client liked is a realism that I can provid in carved wood and carved fused glass for my projects. The tree is a Sacky Sac Bean Tree and the plants he wanted me to include were Bromeliad and Parrots Beak Heliconia.
As I always do we went through detailed scale drawings and I made samples of the colors that I would use. I used Sappelli wood to match the other wood in his home.
The client wanted me to include the jamb and hardware and the installation of the door. To do this I install the hardware onto the jamb and the door in my shop, crate and ship the pre-installed door, so that you can basically fit the jamb into place and after a few adjustments your door is installed.
After finishing the door, I sent pictures for his approval and then crated the door in a very robust crate because of the shipping that was necessary to get it to the island that he lived on. The door got there in great shape and he was very excited to open it up. He was very happy with how everything turned out. He was planning on doing the installation himself because with all the pre-install I had done, it would be an easy installation.
Reproduction.
Carved unfinished door without glass.
Fused glass before installation into door.
Mixtures of powdered glass to be applied to glass and fused in my kiln.
Fused color samples. These were done specifically for this project.