Meet the Team: Part 2

Next in our employee order is Dave Nightengale. Dave has been with us for 12 years. His wife, My, is Vietnamese and Dave may plan on retiring there. He makes his yearly pilgrimage to Vietnam to visit family and work on the property they have purchased.

He has recently finished a very modern kitchen for our client. The entire kitchen is built from bamboo, maple and stainless steel. We have also incorporated aluminum framed doors with ribbed glass panels. Along with the cabinetry we designed and built an aquarium stand and top with abalone and mother of pearl "bubble" inlays. In addition we are making a bamboo window seat and small table from solid walnut with the same "bubble" inlays.

Dave has just completed the four tables for New York I mentioned in the last installment. He did no less than 40 inlays for these tables! This truly is where furniture becomes art, and art becomes furniture. Check out the picture gallery below.

Dave focuses on detail and execution, preparing detailed drawings before beginning fabrication. He is also finishing two custom sculpture stands from zebra wood. I mentioned the difficulty in acquiring exotic woods in a previous blog. In this case it took months to source the quartersawn zebra wood we needed. The stands are built with a diamond pattern on the top with the grain matching to each side and running down to the floor, thus the wood movement will be consistent across the top and down the sides. He is now starting on curved niches made from quartersawn zebrawood veneer.

Next week we will look at the next employee and more projects.