The Conclusion (for now) of Photos of Russell M. Blood's Marquetry Posted by Dwight Blood

Well, I finished the project, at least for now.  There are a few pictures with color casts or backgrounds that I don't like, but they'll have to wait for further fixing.  I'm glad, however, that I had this opportunity to take all of the pictures that have passed down to me off the walls where they have hung and study each one carefully and reproduce them in photography.  Without preparing this family archive of Dad's woodwork, much, if not most, of his incredible work would be lost to others and never seen or appreciated.  This task has brought home indelibly to me the incredible talent that Dad had and his lifelong devotion to wood and wood craftsmanship that began during the heart of the Great Depression in the 1930s and continued until his death in 1993.  As a youngster, woodcraft projects in various stages were always under way.  Even though Dad made our family living as a farmer and dairyman, his true love was art and marquetry.  Some how he found the time though working a grueling lifetime of hard farm work to generate a continual flow of work. 

When Dad died, we six siblings cast lots and drew numbers to see who got which pictures.  We all coveted the castle masterpiece that Ann was lucky enough to get, but the method was more fair than in olden days when I managed to fix the best easter egg transfers and valentines so that when my turn came around I was more lucky than others.

The greatest legacy we children received, besides the love and nurturing we received through difficult and some times heart wrenching years of our growing up , is our share of the inlaid pictures.  When they hang on the wall forever, they sort of become a part of the scenery and we take them for granted.  Then, when we take them down and oil them and study each one carefully for pattern and wood grain and fit and incredible artistic talent and craftsmanship, we are blessed once more with an acute awareness of how much Dad's talent meant to each of us.  He had hoped to make a living with his woodwork.  He would be incredulous if he realized how much some of these pictures are now worth.  Of course, none of them will ever be sold outside the family because their personal worth to us and to our descendants far outweighs any monetary reward we could ever receive from them.

And so my Dad sitting on the white stool in front of the scroll saw that somehow he managed to acquire even during the Great Depression and cutting out intricate pieces of inlaid picture after inlaid picture is an indelible part of my growing up.  And the legacy of the pictures I now possess is one of the most important gifts I have received in my life.

What was involved in taking these photographs of my Dad's inlaid pictures

I have four sisters, and they tend to be bossy at times, and to hand out numerous instructions at other times.  Liz started this blog as a way to provide an archive of the incredible body of artistry through inlaid veneers that our dad created during his lifetime.  Ann, who tends to know a lot of stuff, opined that it was no big deal as she whipped out a light box and took a batch of photos, I presume, in a half hour or so.  It took me a bit longer as I had to make a big enough light box to accommodate the stagecoach picture which is nearly 36 inches wide.  I said a couple of words along the way, but nothing that Dad would not have approved of.  In my case, I bought 5 sheets of foam board by hazarding visits to the Hobby Lobby and hunted up a couple of shop lights at Lowes.  I used white foam board tape to put the miserable thing together.  The photos were shot with a Canon 7d camera which I confess I do not know how to use but intend to learn how it works in the near future.  My wife has been appalled at the mess my den has been in for the past 58 years or so, more or less, and now she is sorry that I took over the entire family room in the lower level of our house for my artsy craftsy stuff, as attested to in the above photo.

I will have a few more things to add later to the blog.  Each of my children have several pictures, some of which are not duplicates of what I have shown here.

I suggest that siblings who have comments on the pictures do so under "edit posts" rather than the comments section, which many people never look at.  Especially, Steve, and maybe Liz, you may have comments on veneers and technical aspects of how these pictures were made that should be of interest to anyone who looks through this blog.