More on box-making and glass etching: The Skeleton Boxes

I had this really lovely piece of facet-edged, rectangular glass that was clear and gorgeous. The problem was it had a hole in top, as I think it was meant to be an award piece of glass that would be attached to a base through this hole. So we decided to use the hole to make it a slide on/off top for a box. Here's the glass. I etched it from a photo of a skeleton curled in a grave.

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And here's the box being clamped together. It's a gorgeous dark wenge that will show off the skeleton really well. This will have a stainless screw with a nice flat top that will hold the glass to the wood and allow the top to swivel on and off the box (at least, we hope. What could go wrong?)

This box is now for sale on our "wood and glass boxes" page!

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If we keep making skeleton boxes, I'll have to make a category for them. Here's another one we just finished, with largely the same skeleton design as above, but on a really thick round piece of glass. We liked the effect of the skeleton holding the box up. We made a bird's eye maple box for it, and fit it over the box so the round top of the glass is the bottom of the box. It's actually watertight since we poured lacquer in the bottom to hold the box to the glass. Then we made a base and used an iridescent piece of abalone shell that looks like a bone for the lid lift. We wanted to use a real bone, but all the bones we had were too small and looked too breakable.

Weird, huh? This is what happens when you don't have a master plan for your art. It's for sale now under "Wood and Glass Boxes" on our website!

And we liked this so much that I etched an octopus on another round piece of glass like this one. More on the octopus as it comes together in a box.

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