Dennis Zongker, Art Deco Style Jewelry Cabinet (FURNITURE 2025)

Photos:

Dennis Lee Zongker

Country

United States of America

My goal was to design a jewelry cabinet to fit into the high society of the roaring twenties. In this time period the Art Deco movement was at full swing. It was a decorative style that influenced art and culture in Europe and the United States. The inspiration for the design came from both Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann 1879-1933 also the Art-Deco movement which was an international decorative style that ran from 1919-1939. The size of the cabinet is 36 ½" wide x 26 ½" deep x 69" tall made out of four different species of hardwood and veneers: American Holly, Macassar Ebony, Gaboon Ebony and Bubinga Burl. With one outside drawer, 24-inside drawers and a hidden door compartment. Designing and making the legs with the elliptical shaped finials was the most challenging for me. It took me several weeks to figure out how to make the diamond shapes mixed with the elliptical rings. By using Gaboon Ebony for the solid larger segmented pieces and American Holly for the thinner rings. Each Finial has 8 elliptical rings, with 4 rings facing right and 4 facing left, cut at 30-degree angles. The segmented glue up is very challenging getting all the rings to line up. Turning them on the lathe was the simplest and fun part of making the top finials. For making the long-segmented legs was a little less challenging, but still took a while to get them glued up. The yield on the solid Gaboon Ebony was not very good considering the cost. I purchased a very large piece of gaboon ebony that was 2" thick x 11" wide x 10'-0" long. To cut out the 32 pieces into Isosceles Triangles I made a jig for the table saw to cut out the 22 1/2-degree angles. First by cutting boards to width and thickness, then by using the jig at the 22 1/2-degree angle, after each cut one long edge then just flip the board over to cut the opposing angle. The next step was to cut the 1/16-inch-thick American holly, 32 pieces 8 for each leg. To glue and clamp the 16 pieces for each leg together I used large rubber bands and wrapped around the pieces after brushing on wood glue. I also used small bar clamps to help tighten up the glue up. After the glue had dried my next step was to glue a piece of holly for the foot of the leg by using a mortis and tenon joint. After the legs were done, I moved onto the lower and upper carcass. One of the most important design goals was to line up the Macassar ebony veneer. I had to purchase a large flitch of veneer so that all the grain would match up. The nicer looking Macassar ebony is where the light brown and black stripes alternate almost like a Zebra with their alternating colors. Matching up the wood grain edge to edge is just as important as match up the length of the grain. I like to figure the veneer out first to make sure I have enough to finish the whole project. My next step was to make the lower carcass which has a large radius cove. I made that cove out of solid cherry hardwood, it is a great wood to veneer over because the grain is very smooth with small pours, and wont telegraph thought the face veneer. To make the large cove I used my table saw by making a straight edge at a 45-degree angle and clamping the edge down to my table saw. Then I just lower the blade to where it sets about the table only 1/16 inch then push the piece of cherry into the blade. Then I repeat this step 8 times to reach the thickness needed for the large radius cove. For the design of the marquetry on the door, I designed the roses and butterflies to be simplistic with unrealistic shapes with less detail. This way the Art Deco style marquetry will blend well with the overall design of the jewelry cabinet. By only using three different veneers for the door marquetry Gaboon Ebony, and American Holly for the butterflies and roses, then Bubinga Burl for the background veneer. On the inside of the cabinet to simplify the design I only used Gaboon Ebony inlays with the main background veneer being American Holly. On the back of the door and on the face of the inside hidden door I used the same diamond shape inlay that is on the outside face of the cabinet. All of the diamond and straight inlays on the outside and inside were routed in dados to the thickness of the veneer. Then I cut the inlays on the table saw with a veneer jig that I made. To fit the inlays, I used a straight chisel by cutting and fitting into the dados. Then I brushed yellow glue into the dados and placed the parts into the vacuum press bag with a caul on top. The lower outside drawer is made out of solid Macassar Ebony with hand cut dovetails. The ebony drawer dividers have lap joints that rest on top of the drawer bottom that is made out of solid American Holly. The 24 inside drawers are made from soft heavy curly maple. Instead of dovetailing the drawers I used a lap corner joint. Then made my own 3/16-inch 3/4-inch-long ebony dowels by using a dowel maker tool. I made them this way to blend with the Art Deco Style.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.