6- Endeavour
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This display stand with a pyramidal cupboard for a collection of sea shells was originally inspired and named after the British America Cup J-Class yacht Endeavour, built in 1934. The era of the J-class in international yacht-racing was short-lived and only ten such yachts were ever built. Their uncompromising design made use of the most advanced and luxurious materials then available and played a key role in their success. Their incredible proportions of over 25 metres long by 48 metres high meant the J-class were regarded, and are still regarded, as the most elegant yachts ever built. Marine references, including the extenuated form of the yacht and the wave-like shape of the shelves, are at the heart of the display stand’s design. |
Details of Manufacture
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Endeavour is an uncompromising, luxurious piece of furniture. The success of its design relies on a minimalist airiness and lightness of matter, which itself requires great craftsmanship to ensure stability and function. Essentially challenging to make, its great achievement is its bare existence. |
The simplicity of Endeavour’s form belies its complex construction. To realise the elegant design, there were many practical, aesthetical and technical difficulties that needed to be overcome. The piece of furniture is in itself a triumph of craftsmanship and ingenuity over impossibility, confronting head-on the limitations of techniques and materials. Manufacture was challenging as machines cannot achieve the problematic design and most of Endeavour’s components were made by hand.
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Models of the entire object, or of small parts of it, were made during the creation process in order to fully appreciate the proportions of the finished piece.
Veneers and Materials:
The brown and white colour scheme is achieved through the use of amboyna burr and white sycamore.
The outside of the pyramid storage cabinet and shelves are entirely veneered in amboyna burr evocative of the 1930s, a period when it was very popular. The knotty nature of this burr makes achieving the sharp edges required for Endeavour difficult. In addition to the manufacturing challenges associated with it, the wood, which is imported from India, is today becoming rare and it is difficult to find veneers of the required size. Amboyna burr is possibly the most expensive wood on the market today.
Sycamore, with its almost pure white colour, is used for the inside of the pyramidal base. It is, however, too fragile for the mast where strength is required. The mast is made of American maple which is a very hard wood, approximating sycamore in colour, but with a slightly pinkish tinge.
Mechanical parts, such as hinges and mast fixings are made of brass plated first with nickel and secondly with chrome before being carefully patinated to give a rich silver matt colour. As opposed to silver, chrome plated brass is extremely resistant to corrosion.
Mast
The triangular, 2.5 metre (8 foot) long mast sweeps upward at an angle and is curved and tapered, with its base being twice the size of its top.
The mast is laminated, using five layers of American maple wood which have a black veneer placed between each layer. The lamination enables the mast to retain its curved shape and provides strength and stability. It is constructed with each of the five pieces of sycamore being tapered to half their starting dimensions at the top before being assembled together in a similar way to a longbow which is thicker at the handle than at the ends. Normal carpentry lamination would prescribe first sticking together untapered pieces of wood then shaping the whole. This would be less aesthetically pleasing and considerably weaker.
Gluing of the laminated mast in a mould.
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The method required for the construction of Endeavour’s mast necessitated exact precision. In addition no veneers are applied on top which could have disguised a mistake. The extreme length of the mast turned this difficult process into an even greater challenge, particularly as everything had to be done by hand.
Display Shelves:
Three shelves slide onto the tapered mast and remain perfectly balanced in equidistant positions without screws or fixings of any kind. The shelves have an undulating wave-like or sail form designed to complement the display of marine objects.
The display area of each shelf is framed by an empty cut-out space, interspersed with aluminium dowels, which is itself surrounded by the outer edge of the shelf. The part of the shelf penetrated by the mast needs to be relatively thick to support the weight of the displayed objects so that the shelves remain in their predetermined positions along the mast. If retained at the front of the shelf this thickness would be aesthetically displeasing and, in fact, the backs of the display shelves are about twice as thick as the fronts, however the fluidity of the design demands that this change of thickness is made subtle and unobtrusive. The graduation of thickness did not allow the shelves to be constructed, as would be easiest, with laminated plywood but required more complicated and skilled carcase work. Once completed each shelf was precisely veneered so that the crisp edges and sharp corners of the modern design were maintained.
Shaping of the laminated shelf using hand rasps in order to achieve the difference of thickness between the front and the back of the shelves.
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Pyramidal Base and marquetry:
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The pyramid base doubles in function.
The first is to ensure steadiness of the piece of furniture and therefore it needed to be strongly built. The second is to function as a cupboard for any part of the sea shell collection that is not being displayed on the shelves. During the seventeenth century, when collectors’ cabinets were at their height in fashion, cabinet makers or retailers would supply wealthy clients with cabinets already filled with a fine collection of objects of curiosity. In the style of a 17th century cabinet, the pyramid base of Endeavour is decorated with a “trompe l’oeil” marquetry representing the inside of the pyramid already filled. Three of the rarest and most desirable sea shells are represented in marquetry.
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From real sea shell to finished “trompe l’oeil” marquetry
The marquetry is made of about ten different species of wood including pink ivory wood from Africa, black ebony, snake wood, holly, kingwood, satiné, boxwood and pernambouc from South America. The background is an assemblage of various tones of European sycamore which were carefully selected to create the three-dimensional effect of a trompe l’oeil.
Trocschel’s murex shell from drawing to finished marquetry. The shell is mainly made of pink ivory, holly and sycamore. Sand shading, where elements are dipped into burning-hot sand, was used to create the darker parts of the shell.