Where do design details come from? Well, I’m always designing, looking, and taking stock of details. It’s the details in furniture that stop me and look twice at a piece. It’s a little bit like walking around with a sketchbook in my head. Some things I take photos of or make a sketch of. But what usually happens quite honestly is that details come out when you need them.

When I’m looking to put a detail into a piece, I often do a small mockup of it. What I call a proof of concept. Something that will tell me that it’s a possibility or that will work like I envision it. On the Butsudan, the case is designed so that the sides extend past the top. The top is designed to evoke a Torri Gate, a traditional Japanese gate that marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred. The top is designed to be carved into a delicate curve and the tops of the sides will have ears that stick up higher than the top. I had an idea to do more to the tops of the sides than cut the top with a router profile. I decided to try to carve into the top and leave the texture of the carving.

Working through small details such as this one will happen once or twice to dozens of times on a more complicated piece. I always need to do just enough to see the idea coming into being to move ahead with the concept on the finished piece.