Shin-Zen-Bi

Its DONE!!!!! My glass is here, although it is not on in the pictures because they wrapped it so nicely for me to transport to Boise this weekend. Now all I have to do is finish the rake that I made and buy some more sand to make sure that the bottom of the drawer doesn't show through.







And this is my concept statement that I turned in to go along with the entry.

The Japanese art of Bonsai is centered on the principal of “heaven and earth in one container”. Through the transparent top of this handcrafted table, a bonsai garden is visible that allows a family to forever hold the abstracted memory of the family's ancestral home. The sand-filled drawer that holds the garden floats effortlessly on a simple, almost primitive mechanism. To continue the Japanese style of the family's home, intricate hand-crafted lattice sides were assembled of over 250 individual pieces. Like a good bonsai garden, three forces have come together: truth, essence, and beauty, or shin-zen-bi.

Shin-Zen-Bi is the title I chose for this coffee table.