This project was forever in development.  We rescued a half burl from a regional lumber yard a couple of years ago. To our eye it was a stringed instrument, at least half of one, but we couldn’t figure out a good way to make the matching side.  Stained glass was unsupportable and rice paper was too flimsy.  Eventually, we got brave enough to risk resawing the burl to make its complementary half (the ‘neck’ part was very delicate and we feared the whole thing would snap off).  We couldn’t resaw exactly down the middle due to the delicate neck, but in the end it worked out, as having one side thicker than the other added another layer of dimension.  Once that step worked out, we built a simple negative space frame from tulip poplar and painted it with acrylic in a festive metallic turquoise color, attached the two pieces of burl, and used exotic cocobolo wood for the artistically interpreted pegs and bridge.  We then used sheet copper for a tail piece and copper wire with a few colored glass accent beads wound around through the sides to call to mind the ‘strings’.   

 

We hope you find our interpretation of a stringed instrument as fun and festive as we do!  This musical instrument was finished in a brush on satin polyurethane and already has a hanger attached to the back of the frame.  It measures 28” tall x 8 1/2” wide x 3 1/2” deep.