Los Angeles Artist Susan Silton came to us with an unusual request: A large table that would accommodate 10 volunteers collectively re-typing John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” for her installation “In Everything There is a Trace” exhibited in the USC Fisher Museum of Art as part of their Drawn To Language show. She was interested in expressing the book’s themes of labor and collectivity in the furniture. Our design called for 10 individual tables, each missing a leg therefore requiring the support of its neighbor. The blurred boundaries between the tables are enhanced by the techniques of marquetry applied to the veneer on the tops. Each joint is marked by the physical break of the material and the continuation of the grain across that seam from one table to the other, creating an assembly that is only whole when all tables are joined together. Photos courtesy of Brian Forrest.

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