Fireplace mantle and pierced cherry relief of hiking mountain man and raven. In 1991 I was asked to make a wall piece for the chimney wall in this Linville, NC home.

My first impression when seeing the beautiful stone work was that sure didn’t want to cover it up.
I gazed at it for a while and began to see an appropriate picture in the stone work. I made a full sized rubbing of the wall to map the grout lines in the masonry. Back in the studio, I overlaid it with a grid and reduced it to an 8.5″ x 14″ piece of paper on which I could do my design.

After approval, I scoured the woods and fields along the mountain roads near our home in the Banner Elk, NC area and found a standing dead cherry tree. I cut it up preserving the forked branches. With a homemade chainsaw lumbering jig, I cut it into forked boards and had them planed and kiln dried.

I drew the design on the original rubbing, marked the joints and cut out patterns which were glued to the forked boards and cut out with a jigsaw. The joints were mitered and spline grooves cut. Parts were then clamped end to end, drilled and pegged to lock the splines in place. All the edges were then sanded to a refined shape and oiled before fastening to the masonry.