This is a fun spalted maple hutch I designed and build for my daughter. Christy wanted a special place to display her collection of plates, platters and bowls. She also needed a cupboard to store table linens. I made a couple of sketches and we landed on this design that fits nicely in her home. I also had a special stash of exotic local lumber that was a perfect fit for the project. I had bought a pile of old maple boards from a friend that looked pretty rough (both the wood and my friend). The boards had been in a shed since the early 1990’s. The shed eventually was overcome by flood during Vermont’s tropical storm Irene. I hadn’t given much credit to the silt covered wood until I started to open it up and discovered a variety of colors and spalting due to the varying fungal decay going on inside.
It was tricky to match the various colors of the old maple to the elements of the hutch. We also decided to finish this piece with tung oil to allow the subtle colors to show naturally.
I used a variety of joinery on Christy’s project from sliding dovetails, mortice & tenon, splines and pocket screws.

This photo shows geometric door panels and knobs as well as the striking spalted maple patterns and figure.