An Almost New Bonsai Plant and Garden Stand

Worked on some sketches of a new outdoor plant stand yesterday and thought I’d preview what I’ve got so far.

I wanted to create a multi-level stand that allowed the plants (or any other objects) to be placed in different horizontal and vertical planes. The important thing here is to get the proportions right. The design looks good to my eye but I’ll need to build the piece to see if the three-dimensional prototype does the design justice. If it does, this will be the No. 7 Bonsai Plant and Garden Stand (or something like that).

I’m using the same three-plane joint in this piece that I use in the No. 1 and No. 3 bonsai stands and the No. 917 chair and legrest. It’s simple and strong.

And, as usual, I’m using cypress. I’m varying the thickness of the rails, the legs and the decks. (I may need to widen the upper decks a tad.) The nice thing about this kind of design is that it’ll be easy to tweak since there are no curves to modify.

So I’m anxious to build it. It could easily do double duty as a side table for a set of No. 917 chairs. A cup of coffee, glasses, the newspaper, a book — all have places here. It then becomes a cutting- edge/fashion-forward side table AND a plant stand with a place for everything.

Or I could split it into two units. One unit would be a side table/stand that’s comprised of the two upper decks and the lower deck directly in front of the two upper decks. Then the other unit becomes a kind of shohin bonsai stand.

Or, perhaps more likely, I’ll make all three versions available.

We’ll see how the prototypes look.

Your correspondent: is having too much fun.