Tall, hollowed vessel with rounded shoulders, long center, and solid base. Rich, stormy fissures from the natural decay of the wood mix with painterly streaks of tan and deep umber, bringing to mind a far-off, abstract landscape. The piece is made from the timber of a spalted maple tree from an island on the Salish Sea, felled naturally from disease.
The making of...
Each of Shaw's pieces is a collaboration with the tree—he allows the tree to tell him what it wishes to be. He works with primarily centuries-old fallen timber that was stricken with disease, finding that the knots, crags, fissures, and "flaws" tell the most compelling stories. Shaw works with the principles of thirds—top, middle, and base—to balance the features of the wood within his vessels and to reveal the character and beauty of the once-proud trees.
About Perry Shaw
Perry Shaw is a third-generation woodworker based in Seattle, WA. As a youth, he built his childhood home side by side with his father, a self-taught master carpenter; decades later, after discovering the lathe in his then-retired father's woodshed, he taught himself how to turn wood. Shaw is both storyteller and caretaker to the trees, aspiring to reveal the character of the wood through simple, beautifully refined forms. Shaw draws endless inspiration from the trees of the Pacific Northwest that he now calls home.
