The Desk

Damien Wright's model of "Harry's Desk".

Greg places the objet d'art just so.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on a story exploring the role of sketching in the process of design. The editor was eager for me to include a discussion of the work of at least a couple of Australians, and I decided to collect some remarks from my friend Damien Wright, a craftsman who makes furniture from native Australian wood. Damien draws a lot of working sketches, but he gets more mileage from the scale models he builds. The other night, he dropped off one of those models with a couple of his sketchbooks for me to look over, to see what might be useful in illustrating the article. I took a few shots of the tiny desk using my tabletop cyc. He calls this one "Harry's Desk."

Inspecting the joinery.

I refused to caption this one.

I took a short break for lunch, and by the time I came back, Joe and Greg had discovered the desk and decided they wanted to keep it for their office. It's a little small, but they complained they don't have anything to write on at the moment, and they thought their Hovitos idol (a trophy from a mission to Peru) looked good on it. I explained they could borrow it for a few days, but that Damien is getting it back. Thus ensued some further inspection and horsing around, until I'd had enough and put the model away.