The Top 5 Reasons to Visit Kevin Wiggers at IDS11

Here are the top 5 reasons to visit Kevin Wiggers' booth #SN-42 at this week's Interior Design Show (IDS11).


Reason #5:

Although everyone loves the idea of having large flat screen TVs in their home, how do you hide these things when you're not watching television?

Kevin's solution is a custom made cabinet that can hide a 40" LCD TV inside a 6" deep space.



Reason #4

Reason #4 for visiting Kevin at IDS11 is to check out his use of environmentally responsible and sustainable materials.

Going "green" has come a long way from recycling old crates to make furniture. The cabinet shown in the video is made of FSC certified Ebony which has been laminated using non-UF glue. The cabinet is also finished in a low-VOC water based urethane, which means that it qualifies for points under the LEED program.

Reason #3

Reason #3 for visiting Kevin Wiggers at this week's IDS11 is to see an example of his mosaic veneer inlay work. The rotating panel in the video above has been meticulously inlaid by hand using individually shaped panels of wood veneer. The inlays were cut freehand and have been fitted with incredible precision. If nothing else this mosaic panel demonstrates Kevin's exceptional skill and talent using traditional marquetry techniques learned from his grandfather.

Reason #2

The #2 reason for visiting booth #SN42 at IDS11 is to see a rare example of geniune fine parchment work.



The large sample that Kevin will have on display is going to be the real McCoy, using the same materials and techniques that the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians used as far back as the 6th Century BC. (That said, this sample is NOT going to be faux finished paint or textured wallpaper.)

Reason #1

Finally (drum roll, please) , the number #1 reason for visiting booth SN42 at this year's Interior Design Show is to meet the maker: Kevin Wiggers.

For a young man who turns 21-years-old tomorrow, this kid has talent.

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Parchment

Over the last 20 years we have occasionally used a material called parchment in several of our custom made furniture pieces.

Parchment is a thin material made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin. It is distinct from leather in that it is limed, not tanned. For this reason it is sensitive to humidity and not waterproof. Parchment use has a long history, going back to Egyptian Fourth Dynasty texts. The Assyrians and Babylonians also wrote their cuniforms on parchment from the 6th Century BC onward.

In Europe parchment craft emerged as an artform in the 15th or 16th century, but it wasn't until the emergence of the Art Deco movement from 1915 to the early 1930s that parchment became used in fine furniture made by the likes of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Jules Leleu. Parchment also enjoyed a brief resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to the exotic work of furniture designers such as Ron Seff and Karl Springer.

Parchment can be a challenging material to work with because of its tensile rigidity and inclination to shrink when drying. In addition, because it is a natural material careful attention must be paid to the type of glue that gets used to adhere it to panels. We will typically use either a hyde glue or a dextrin adhesive made from plant materials.

My son Kevin has shown a keen interest in learning what I do for a living, so I recently challenged him to make sample panels out of some goatskin parchment we had on hand. The resulting panels are shown below and, frankly, I'm quite impressed at what Kevin was able to accomplish.



The panel on the left was finished in a high gloss low-VOC polyester, and the darker areas can be attributed to deeper resin penetration in areas where the parchment is thinner and more porous. The sample on the right was finished in a satin open grain pre-catalyzed lacquer, and this finish seems to give the parchment a more uniform and textured appearance.

I've since decided to also pull some shagreen (stingray skin) out of my core stash, and it will be interesting to see what Kevin comes up with on his next challenge.

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