Stickley Inspired Plant Stand

This plant stand is based on one of Gustav Stickley’s models featured in Robert Lang’s book Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture. I departed from the Stickley design by rotating the lower stretcher, and making it a bit wider to use as a shelf. Rather than a pegged tenon, the shelf’s stub through-tenons are secured with ebony wedges. The original featured Grubey tile; but that being spendy, mine has Mexican Talavera tile which I picked up at an auction. With the exception of the ebony wedges and the plywood tile board and cleats, the piece is constructed entirely of quarter-sawn, white oak and stained with Van Dyke crystals, then finished with linseed oil, then stained with Bartley’s Golden Oak gel stain, then finished with 3 coats of 1/2 lb cut shellac, then 3 coats of thinned polyurethane. As Lang suggests, I did the finishing first, then the glue-up, then the tile. The construction is all mortise and tenon, and to avoid interference at the 90 degree joints, the tenons are chamfered along the inside facing edge. The project is simple, though it is a challenge to get all the horizontal parts (with the exception of the shelf) to be exactly the same length between tenon ends. There are 22 mortise-and-tenon joints to make and fit. A bench-top hollow chisel mortising machine is handy. Also, I own a good shoulder plane! The tiles were carefully selected for flatness and size (they are handmade and not at all uniform). They are set with a silicone tile adhesive, then grouted the old fashioned way with a 50:50 mix of sanded and unsanded grout.

-- SteveL