Designing a pair of carved doors

 When I'm working with my clients I like to really personalize the design based on input from them. This pair of doors for a client in Santa Fe are a perfect example of that collaboration. The client only had a limited idea of what she wanted her doors to look like. She knew that she wanted some carving and that she wanted a tight fit to keep sound from traveling between her home office and the activity in the rest of the house. To keep the sound transfer to a minimum we decided to make the panels a full 1 3/4" thick and make the fit to the floor as small as possible. 

When it came to design the carving we spent a little time looking at and talking about different options. She thought a round, somewhat floral look would be nice. That made her think of a detail that she had seen on a picture that she had of a medallian on a headband. For me this is what custom design is all about. A little detail from a picture, or a clipping from a magazine can become the basis for some of the detailing on a custom piece. 

The image below is what she gave to me to work with. She faxed it to me and I worked it up into a drawing to give her a better idea of how it would look as a carving.

Here is the sketch I drew up for her of the carving detail along with the final carving itself. This is a pretty quick process that encourages the clients input, and in the end gives them a piece of custom woodwork that really reflects their aesthetics. See more examples of custom doors here.

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