Going in Circles

For me the big thing I wanted to figure out is how Nathan Lombard constructed his arabesque inlays. There is a spirit and life to the designs, unlike any other maker I’ve seen. Because it is constructed of a series of arcs, I wondered if I could figure out how he did it.

With a Pennsylvania Spice Box decorated with line and berry, there is a geometric pattern based on dividing the circle into 3rds, 6ths, or 8ths. It’s pretty simple to work out the radii and if you are careful about it make the stringing match up nicely.

My version of the ever popular Latta Pennsylvania Spice Box

Lumbard is all together different. There is no obvious origin. So I set about finding it. I took a blown up printing of the Christies table top. The image is clear enough to more or less make it out. I laid some tracing paper over it and started playing around. There is an arc near the bottom that was pretty easy to find the origin and radius, so I copied that to my scrap board. I found the origin of another, different arc, and added it to the scrap board. I did this for maybe 6 or 7 of the arcs and I started to notice each radius was a particular distance apart. Even with the slightly fuzzy enlarged image, they were really close. I was stunned – every arc I added to my scrap fit the pattern. Pretty soon I had something that looked like this:

I don’t know the dimension of the module. The majority of arcs are based on an odd number of the module: 3, 5, 7… modules. There are some that are based on an even number. So it’s even enough it’s clear to me this module was used in designing the top.

On the left, the smallest circle is 4 modules diameter, while on the right it’s 3 modules. The key.

I was pretty jazzed. So the next night I tried to draw it as accurately as possible. It was a little hard to figure out if there were origins in particular places, and my first try didn’t go so well. So I considered another way to draw it. I opened up AutoCAD and recreated my circle exercise using different colored circles, trying to see if I could figure out where the origins should be located. I played around a bit, and adjusted the module until it worked and the arcs were nearly perfect. I still didn’t know the measurement of the module – and it didn’t matter. In fact, it turned out that module is the width of the banding. With some playing around I even figured out a way to locate everything. Some of the origins are just out in space – like you might expect vines or branches to be. The arcs worked nearly everywhere. I created this drawing, overlaid on the manipulated JPG, and sent it off to plot.

A manipulated copy of the photo; hard to see but there are color coded circles and the origins are located.

Armed with this, I then tried to draw it again. Success:

My first drawing – OK, the urn is clunky.

I learned some things as I did all this. First, Lumbard’s inlay is not perfectly symmetrical. It looks pretty close, but some origins and lines start/stop in different places on each side. But it looks symmetrical or at least very balanced.

I learned other things as I worked with the drawing electronically. Of course, the photos are only so great and I have little chance of ever seeing the original. So there is guesswork here. The front view of the table top looks to be more or less straight on. I tried to draw the pedestal, legs, and drawer. Knowing the width of the banding, which also appears on the drawer front, I found that the module could be applied to the entire table. Here I feel like I’m guessing a lot because of the parallax introduced by the camera view – but it sort of works.

That’s the condensed version of the story anyway. Once I figured out how he did that inlay, I decided to proceed. The last really tough part of the inlay is that some of the lines are tapered. That was a new one on me. I only knew how to make stringing of a consistent width. More on that another time.

Here’s the top, with the stringing in place and a few flowers laid in.

Progress shot, Lumbard table project.