Black walnut is one of North America's most prized woods for furniture making. Few people, however, realize that the dark brown color they associate with walnut is the color of the heartwood of the tree. The sapwood is lighter. In commercially made furniture, the sapwood is typically stained to match the heartwood, if it's used at all.

In this piece, I chose to explore the contrast between the lighter sapwood and the darker heartwood, using them for the legs and aprons of the piece, respectively.

The top is quarter sawn white oak, which I bleached to a bone white to contrast with the darker base and subvert the viewer's associations of oak with the somber and sometimes ponderous oak furniture of older styles.