Critics have commented that this artist uses wood to create his own designs that often are far more intricate and complex than designs found in contemporary quilts. And quilting in wood has to be far more difficult and tedious than quilting with traditional fabrics.

Of the few artists creating unique wood vases, this artist's work is far superior to most, both in terms of design and workmanship. He uses no paint or stains, preferring to highlight the natural colors of the various woods he uses in his creations.

For each vase he cuts the individual pieces of wood that he needs to create a circle the thickness of the pieces of wood used in the circle. He glues the pieces together and lets the circle dry. Many of his vases require numerous circles. After he has created all of the individual circles required for a particular vase, he glues the circles together to form a very rough vase.

Once the glue has totally dried, he places the rough vase in a lathe and uses various wood chisels to shape the exterior of the vase to whatever shape he has chosen. Then he reams out and sands the interior of the vase. Voila!! The wood colors repeat the design inside the vase!

After a final fine sanding and buffing, the artist applies a protective coating to the entire vase, then signs and dates his work.

Most of the vases stand between 6 and 8 inches tall and measure approximately 4 to 5 inches in diameter. The woods include black walnut, cherry, lace wood, mahogany, maple, padauk, purple hart, yellow hart, etc., each wood with a distinctive natural color.

Depending upon the complexity of the design, the size and number of the individual wood pieces, etc., the artist typically takes from 8 to 20 hours to complete a vase. The few larger ones and those with lids, of course, take longer.

The artist is not being identified here for the very simple reason he doesn't want a constant stream of curious visitors interrupting his work. Although a Georgian, he does not live in Murray County.

This privately held collection of works by this unnamed artist is by far the largest collection of his works anywhere. The owner of this collection of more than 300 pieces grew up in Murray County, but because of security concerns for this unusual collection, prefers not to be identified on this website.

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