Another pattern formed by shifting two of the top sliders. A minimal amount of shift changes the pattern dramatically. This is a step along the way to opening the box.
The Cafe Wall Box
In 2017 I was able to successfully make veneers from a simple and thin striped pattern of wood using a Japanese hand plane called a kanna. See video here. The dark wood may look like ink but it is actually walnut soaked in a solution of vinegar and iron making it turn jet black like ebony. The light wood is holly.
In 2018 I composed it into this box based on the Pattern Box and Cafe Wall Table. I aligned 5 of these strips together and they shift into 4 different elegant patterns. I fixed two of these to the box to make it more stable and this also restricts the number of patterns to 4 possibilities, but they are all very elegant patterns in my opinion. And when the strips are jogged so they do not align it nicely creates the Cafe Wall illusion like the table, so I named it after that.
Hand planing patterned wood veneer is a Japanese technique called "Yosegi Zaiku" and is very difficult. However, it has a wonderful advantage of creating no waste so it allows me to gather ten times the material from one block of patterned wood. This is nice because it takes an immense amount of time to create the pattern brick to begin with.
I consider this box a working proof and may produce a small production of it in the future since I was able to render a good quantity of usable veneer.
Being able to make Yosegi veneer using a plane represents a milestone in woodworking for me and I talk more about this in a talk I did at the EG Conference. You can watch it at the link below.
Some other videos of me making Yosegi Zaiku.
Planing an image of my daughter.
Making extra wide Yosegi Zaiku like the masters.