This stand began with Wendell Castle's music stand at the Art Institute of Chicago — a piece I admired for its tapered, bent-laminated legs and its quiet line, but one that offered no adjustment of any kind. The aim here was to keep that line and let the stand actually work.

Height adjustment is handled by a long sliding dovetail running the length of the column. A long dovetail is unforgiving — a few thousandths of an inch too loose and it rattles, too tight and it won't move at all, and seasonal wood movement has to live somewhere in the equation. Tilt is adjusted by a second wood mechanism.

The bent uprights are laminated from very thin layers of hard maple, pre-bent with steam, clamped overnight on a form, and then glued up with a rigid urea resin on a second form. The base and music holder are bent plywood laminations veneered in maple, formed in a vacuum press. The front and back uprights each required their own forms.

The joinery — curved parts meeting curved parts, again and again — is the part woodworkers tend to linger over. From design through finish, the stand carries more than 180 hours of work.

maple / quilted maple

45-51 ½” H, 20 ¾” W

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