We have the privilege of fabricating a torah-reading table for Or Shalom. The proposed design picks up on the architecture of the place of worship Or Shalom shares with Beth Israel Judea in San Francisco --tall vertical cherry panels behind the bima, but softening it with an oval shape. The technical challenge of the piece will be to get the wood to curve in two planes. Trees grow that way-- but milled wood does not like to be bent that way.
Here are the plans:
And here are a few images of a preliminary form for bending the cherry into shape:
The design is still in progress. Or Shalom and Beth Israel Judea need to give their final approval and we need to determine that we can in fact get our wood to bend in two planes, (The ribs shown are not part of the actual table but will instead be used as a form against which we will mold the cherry.)
