Occasionally we are able to make our Sonus chair out of some pretty unusual woods. We have already sold a few, such as red elm and some unusually colored curly maple. Those usually sell before we make them. These woods tend to appear from some surprising source and cannot be found on a regular basis. So we call them “catch of the day,” just like restaurant fish specials. And like fine restaurants, we want to keep the door open for whatever unique offerings the market offers that might be outside our usual menu. We recently had an opportunity to purchase some unusually intense curly maple from Brian Brown at Artisan Lumber. He was holding this wood in his personal stash, so we would not have found it in a search. It just came up in a conversation about our Sonus plans. The tree itself was unusual, yielding thousands of feet of exquisite lumber. Unfortunately, nearly all of it was sold by the time we found out about it.
The story goes that an ornamental maple naturally hybridized with our native red maple, creating a fast-growing tree with a tendency to wad up its fibers as it grew. The curl is deeper and more chatoyant than any other curly maple we have worked with in the past. Of course, this figure makes these chairs more difficult to shape and finish, but as you can see from the photos, the presence of this figure is pretty spectacular! We only have one more of these, but it’s not likely we will see curls like this again soon. The market price for this rare beauty is $3800. We will continue to look for other rare materials to make “catch of the day” Sonus chairs whenever we can find something super cool to share. In fact, we have some amazing stuff in the kiln now… so stay tuned…
Three-time Grammy Award winner, Steve Vai, and his reflections on his Sonus Guitar Chair:
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