Oct 06

Rebel Coffee Table, Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D., 2020

“Rebel Coffee Table” – Star Wars-inspired table

Star Wars-inspired coffee table with mahogany rebel inlay into padauk and bloodwood, with walnut/cherry base, and Tatooine drawer fronts.


This is a little coffee table for our lair, which has also become my “office” when I’m working from home after lab work. My goals were 1) design it with a smaller footprint than my crappy old table. This is a little room. 2) have a slider for quick access and stowing of keyboard/mouse. 3) cover my PC tower, which I wanted more accessible from my futon. I intentionally made it asymmetrical to reduce size, though I can easily move the top to be symmetrical if I want in the future. The left overhang will double as a mount for an adjustable arm/second monitor I can swing out of the way when not working. And 4) have a touch of geek to it, which ended up being more than a touch 😂.


The top is padauk and bloodwood, inlayed by hand with African mahogany Rebel insignia. The legs are walnut firewood I milled myself. The rest of the base is cherry. The drawer fronts were scrollsawed from purpleheart, chakte viga, padauk, bloodwood, and maple.
Pardon the poor pics. It’s a dark basement. And I ain’t hauling this thing upstairs to photograph. lol

Sep 19

Walnut Side Table

Walnut Reading Nook Side Table

This week we decided to set up a reading nook for @tamarynart in the basement (which will eventually be curtained off). I threw together this little table to go next to her new chair. The top is a walnut log I got for free down the road a few years ago (cut for power lines) and the legs are a spalted white oak log I picked up from the in-laws yard in NC last year. I had zero designs making this and built it on the fly, guided by that gorgeous feathering after I cut the log in half. I’m pretty happy with it for having essentially started as 100% firewood!

Aug 29

Walnut & Cherry Seed Box

Walnut & Cherry Seed Box, 2020

Seed storage box!

I’ve been slowly accumulating garden seeds, both leftovers from this spring, and harvested seeds (for example, I ferment a couple tomatoes every year to collect for next year). I had a large dusty ziplock of them just sitting in my shop and decided they needed to go into a dark, dry box in our basement pantry. This was a great excuse to use up some cherry logs I got from my boss, which are completely filled with bug holes and not very usable for most things. But they’re perfect for something that will be hidden for ~363 days a year and only be seen by me. So why did I waste time on that power-carved walnut leaf top? Because I’ll still see it once a year. Also, I wanted to practice cutting some dovetails. I also through some dry rice in there as a desiccant.

Aug 28

Momo Avatar Wooden Art

“Momo,” Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D., 2020

“Momo”, 2020, wood intarsia, no paint/stain, except the eyes.

My niece @dorky_artista recently convinced me to watch “Avatar: the Last Airbender”. I had already been considering it since I’m a huge Dave Filoni fan (Clone Wars, Rebels, now head of Lucasfilm animation, and was involved in Mandalorian), who got his start with Avatar.

Let me just say that, despite being a show “for kids”, it really lived up to the hype in terms of superb emotional storytelling and character development. I became an instant fan. Such memorable characters!

As I was watching I randomly had the thought “I have to make Momo for my niece!”. I didn’t even initially intend for it to be a birthday present. It was gonna be a “just because I love you present”. But I saw her bday coming up, and thought “perfect!!”.

Then as I designed it I thought “this is too cute. I have to make a matching one for me too.” So I made two of them. 😂

Made from holly, maple, walnut, ebony, yew, elm, and a cherry background. @chestnutproducts Spirit stains for the irises.

Aug 27

Guillermo, Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D., 2020

“Guillermo”, Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D., 2020

Wooden intarsia art. 23 species of wood, no paint/stain.

Im happy to finally post the final shots of this piece devoted to everyone’s favorite Vampire familiar/slayer!

After watching “What We Do in the Shadows” (@theshadowsfx) on @fxnetworks, this idea randomly hit me one day and it was one of those “well I guess I have no choice but to make this now” deals. I felt compelled. After I began, I must admit that a big motivation came from the Guillermo actor himself, Mr. Harvey Guillén (@harveyguillen). It turns out, Harvey is a pretty rad guy in real (virtual) life and gave me tons of private encouragement and funny little quips he’d rather I not share for reasons that would be obvious 😜. Needless to say, my inner geek was pretty stoked to be chatting about an artwork with the actor who inspired it! Harvey is easily 1 of the 4 funniest characters on the show and everyone should watch it. 😜

The best part? Harvey Guillen himself now owns this piece!!!

This piece is is roughly based on a promo from FX marketing. I wanted to add a little more detail to highlight the duality behind Guillermo’s loyalty as a familiar/desire to become a vampire and his apparently inherent penchant for slayage. The sun, fire, and door represent his first hilarious kill. Of course I added the stake bandolier and a crossbow. But astute fans will note that the bandolier also contains his trusty “Tide to go” pen for clean-up duties. The promo had the bat wings as sort of a looming presence. But I see them here more as Guillermo’s desire to become a Vamp and “BAT!” away with Nandor (@kayvan_novak). The font is based on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.

Constructed from maple, zebra wood, Brazilian rosewood, bocote, wenge, katalox, ebony, holly, sapele, mahogany, walnut, chakte viga, redheart, purpleheart, yellowheart, mesquite, bloodwood, honey locust, elm, ash, yellow pine, Douglas fir, luaun ply.