Valet Tray -- Traditional Hawaiian Design

[JW]

Hello forum,

It has been a bit, and I wanted to display something I finished recently. This is a valet tray I tooled a traditional Hawaiian design on it; a good friend of mine drew the design for me. It's not perfect, but it was a definite learning curve. It is surprisingly hard to translate a complete 2D drawing, into something with a 3D feel. Lemme know what you guys think, critiques, changes, etc. I'll take them all.

--JW

[Double Daddy]

Stunning craftsmanship...l like that you chose a rectangular shape rather than the typical square layout...and the button studs for the corners are a nice touch.

[Instinctive]

Looks fantastic. Carving straight lines and curves is one one of the toughest things to do (at least for me). Minimizing the coloring is really good to. I like my coffee to taste lake coffee and my leather to look like leather.

[LatigoAmigo]

That is the nicest valet tray I have ever seen. Beautiful work.

[bullmoosepaddles]

Stunning. Unique. You should be very proud. 

[Dun]

hana hou!

[Tugadude]

Absolutely love it.  Well executed and unique pattern.  Does that style have a name?  For some reason it makes me want to travel to Fiji or Tahiti or somewhere like that...

[Retswerb]

That is sweet. I really like the decorative cuts in the woven looking part at the top - great texture and depth.

[Aven]

JW ~ that is just stunning.  I love everything about it.

[Tugadude]

OK, so I re-read the description and feel foolish.  Hawaiian!  Doh!

[DJole]

Great design, excellent execution. That's a real attention-grabber, there! It's too nice for a bedside valet -- it belongs in the front room. 

[JW]

Wow, thank you everybody for the kind words.

 

11 hours ago, Double Daddy said:

Stunning craftsmanship...l like that you chose a rectangular shape rather than the typical square layout...and the button studs for the corners are a nice touch.

@Double Daddy To me the rounded corners are more aesthetically pleasing; the square corners, in my opinion, look like wasted material.

 

9 hours ago, Instinctive said:

Looks fantastic. Carving straight lines and curves is one one of the toughest things to do (at least for me). Minimizing the coloring is really good to. I like my coffee to taste lake coffee and my leather to look like leather.

@Instinctive Yeah, that's one of the flaws in this piece, the radius following the central sunburst isn't even, and that is bugging me big time. The way the color turned out reminded me of a carved wooden surface, but I agree, if my coffee tasted like leather, something's not right.

 

9 hours ago, LatigoAmigo said:

That is the nicest valet tray I have ever seen. Beautiful work.

@LatigoAmigo Thank you very much, I'm certainly trying to make it better.

 

9 hours ago, bullmoosepaddles said:

Stunning. Unique. You should be very proud. 

@bullmoosepaddles Thank you, it's certainly a one-of-a-kind, I haven't seen much Hawaiian leather work.

 

7 hours ago, Dun said:

hana hou!

@Dun Haha, will do brah. Another Hawaiian leather project is in the works.

 

6 hours ago, Tugadude said:

Absolutely love it.  Well executed and unique pattern.  Does that style have a name?  For some reason it makes me want to travel to Fiji or Tahiti or somewhere like that...

 

4 hours ago, Tugadude said:

OK, so I re-read the description and feel foolish.  Hawaiian!  Doh!

@Tugadude No worries, everything you see in this style has a meaning, the central 'sunburst' motif is a crown, either of feathers or leaves, symbolizing royalty, and so on and so forth. It's pretty interesting the more you learn about it.

 

6 hours ago, Retswerb said:

That is sweet. I really like the decorative cuts in the woven looking part at the top - great texture and depth.

@Retswerb Thanks, I was hoping for some more shading and depth where the weaving was going underneath itself, but I'll experiment more. If you wanna try a similar basket weave, using only a sk and beveler, I suggest looking up paving stone patterns, like the Herringbone ones, it makes for some good basket weave.

 

3 hours ago, DJole said:

Great design, excellent execution. That's a real attention-grabber, there! It's too nice for a bedside valet -- it belongs in the front room. 

@DJole Thank you, well, I'm not sure where it's final home will be, I just hope it will be used.

Edited May 4, 2018 by JW

[Tugadude]

@Tugadude No worries, everything you see in this style has a meaning, the central 'sunburst' motif is a crown, either of feathers or leaves, symbolizing royalty, and so on and so forth. It's pretty interesting the more you learn about it.

 

well, it is really good and evokes a feeling, so I would classify it as art.

[kiwican]

This is very cool. I might have to do one in a south pacific island style