it is not a trophy - really » wood

wood and personality

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:14:52 +0000

There are a number of reasons we may suggest using natural wood as one of the mediums for your design. Perhaps the single largest reason is that wood has a personality all its own. The cut, grain and finish all comprise the visual and tactile qualities that evoke a sense of this personality. Each design we create carefully chooses the correct species for the mood and meaning. We further enhance these with a hand rubbed oil finish to provide the warmth and character of the wood.

All of the woods shown below have there own natural beauty and coloring but perhaps more importantly they impart character.

Some of the woods we have worked with:
Walnut	Ash	Red Oak	Hard Maple
Curly Maple	Birdseye Maple	Spalted Maple	Cherry
Mahogany	African Paduak	Purple Heart	Cocobolo
Wenge	Teak	Bubinga	Zebrawood
Maple Burl	Rosewood	Ebony	Redheart

There are a multitude of other wood species to choose from, each with there own unique characteristics. Take a look at this page of collected wood samples to appreciate the variety. Should you see something you particularly like – ask us and we can advise you to its workability for your application in design.

mediums

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:05:54 +0000

There are many mediums we can work with to deliver the right design. To simply this a bit, we want to explain their usage. More times than not our use of other mediums is to add a tone and a stature to our engraved works – allowing the beauty of the glass or crystal to be punctuated in its overall presentation.

glass

What is commonly referred to as Crystal – is in fact Optical Grade Glass. Lead crystal is slowly disappearing (due to its lead content) and Optical Glass has similar properties without the health issues. Like crystal, Optical Glass is water clear without the tints of more common glass. Most importantly it is distortion free – it has no flow lines, seeds or other imperfection within the medium.

Perhaps it is the purity of optical glass that is the most alluring aspect of this medium to us. The ability to engrave it with a number of techniques allows for myriad possibilities to communicate your message. We like to use this material as headpieces to transport the engraved design to the viewer.

Blocks provide us the room to focus more on the design within leveraging our expertise in Sub Surface Engraving. Though basically rectangles, the design allows for dimensional representation, spatial juxtaposition and simply high detail dimensional laser art.

see some of the sizes

wood

The woods we use come in a variety of species, they are solid wood – never a veneer. Each piece we use is personally hand selected for their character in grain and stability as a material. We handle and oversee the cutting, dimensioning, and final shaping of each design we create. Even our finishes are hand rubbed in oil to bring out the natural beauty in these woods.

Our use of natural woods is also very deliberate to imply tones and color into the character of each design. In addition to their natural beauty, they are also excellent mediums for additional engraving onto – allowing the recipients’ name to be engraved without using a garish plaque.

see some of the woods

stone

Stone is a lovely material to build upon with the right design. Mostly we work with dark marble and granite to support the contrast needed when engraving them. Our “Absolute Black” stone is the most popular for two reasons 1) “black goes with anything” and 2) the visual contrast between the crystal engraving makes the design pop. Though our Black is the most popular other marble and granite colors are available as well.

The stance and sheer weight of the Slab stones creates a presence in themselves which we find geometrically elegant. Our designs in these mediums are best used in what we like to call “Monolithic” in sizes up to 24″ tall (fairly heavy).

When a design doesn’t call for a Monolithic size, we find that the marble and granite flats provide an beautiful area to engrave upon for a number of designs that benefit from the high contrast of the black background. Regardless of the size, the engraving of this stone is stunning and extremely detailed.

see some of the marble and granite

metal

We find metal to be an excellent medium to transfer some of our more contemporary designs into. Machined aluminum provides some of our widest amount of finishing techniques to be applied to their surface ranging from a brushed finish to a mirror polish – all to enforce texture as a design element.

Structurally speaking, metals provide a tremendous opportunity to support or embellish our designs in optical glass or solid stone with a minimal amount of material. This additional strength provides more open area beneath or around the piece while maintaining its stability.

others

There are other materials we find useful as a medium but like every design we create it would depend on how it was being used. So should you have a need for a design incorporating a 24K Gold Riding Crop with Diamond Studs elevated on a brushed Titanium Stand with internal illumination – we should be able to help you (create it).

core – diamonds

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:58:08 +0000

any hardwood can be used when we make our custom awards

Our Diamond Line of Awards is a crossover design providing contemporary styling with geometric shapes

All of our awards incorporate what we consider the most unique features in award design. Everything from the select hardwoods we purchase and shape to the beauty of their grains enforced by the hand rubbed oil finish – all of which punctuate the craftsmanship of a quality award.

The optical crystal headpiece allows for either traditional engraving or our advance dimensional internal engraving while the base can support a wide variety of text engraving to complement the headpiece.

core – trapazoids

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:56:59 +0000

any hardwood can be used when we make our custom awards

Our Trapezoids Line of Awards provide a classic geometry to integrate our optical crystal headpiece with.

core – ellipse

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:55:38 +0000

any hardwood can be used when we make our custom awards

Our Ellipse Line of Awards provide smooth contemporary contours that complement our optical crystal headpieces in ways not traditionally used – which was the point.