setting the table

I love the work of my friend, artist Marcia Stuermer, who designs acrylic resin furniture and art installations   ia her company Stuermer Studios. Embedded in the resin can be anything from grasses and rice, to computer parts, cds, street trash, rocks, and skeletal leaves, frozen in what can be considered modern fossils.
The surface of these things is lovely- honed, durable, hard but not cold.

I've asked Marcia to make a table for me, an unusual size, round, sort of a dining room library all purpose life table. I am putting a lot of pressure on this table to be everything for me already. For a long time I was not sure what it ought to preserve- my shell collection, single earrings, or any of those other odd bits of old and pretty that I not so secretly collect, but rarely display in a somewhat vain effort to unclutter my life. None of my ideas seem to quite work with the arty-farty eclectic Victoriana gallimaufry that is my décor.

The ideal solution presented itself to us when Marcia and I went to see a show in the gallery of the Intersection for the Arts, where a profound installation by Stephani Martinez reminded me that I have a trunk full of hand made lace doilies made by my great-grandmother.

Today I picked up the fantastic sample Marcia made.

I am very excited to see the results of this. Rather than setting the table with a lace tablecloth... it will be an Embedded Translucent Lace Table.