Greg Bettjeman had bought a home that needed work and he wanted a challenge—a mountain to climb. He found one in a wood floor project. He had built an extension on his New Zealand home and was about to glue down planks of native river-reclaimed macrocarpa and Hall's totara when he says he paused. "No, let's do something different," Bettjeman recalls thinking.
"Different" turned out to be unlike anything seen before. He cut the wood with a scroll saw into more than 500 freeform geometric shapes 1 inch thick and no greater than 2 feet in length. Swimming through the shapes is a family of what he refers to as nematodes, whose beady black eyes were made from ebony and spalted tawa. Bettjeman wanted to give the nematodes a place to go, so he inlaid a pond scene complete with the rippled reflections of a tree made from red beech and a moon of evergreen buckthorn.
The next step was to accentuate each piece with a heavy curve routed around the edges. Here is the article to go with the pictures
"Different" turned out to be unlike anything seen before. He cut the wood with a scroll saw into more than 500 freeform geometric shapes 1 inch thick and no greater than 2 feet in length. Swimming through the shapes is a family of what he refers to as nematodes, whose beady black eyes were made from ebony and spalted tawa. Bettjeman wanted to give the nematodes a place to go, so he inlaid a pond scene complete with the rippled reflections of a tree made from red beech and a moon of evergreen buckthorn.
The next step was to accentuate each piece with a heavy curve routed around the edges. Here is the article to go with the pictures