About a year ago, I started work on a cabinet featuring an okapi, one of my favorite animals.

Photo: John Polak Photography

Okapis, which are related to giraffes, live in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Like giraffes, they have long bluish tongues, and male okapis have little horn-like bumps on their foreheads called ossicones. I can personally attest that they have exceptionally soft fur, which I know because I got to pat one at the Houston Zoo.

Photo of a male okapi, viewed from behin

Photo: Derek Keats via Flickr (shared under Creative Commons license CC By 2.0)

Most notably, okapis have fabulous black and white stripes on their butts and legs. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make art featuring an animal’s butt.

Photo of me in the woodshop, holding my marquetry okapi on the day that I cut out its shape to fit into the background

For the background and sides of my cabinet, I experimented with a multi-layered foliage pattern. I had previously made a bunch of abstract pieces that looked like coral, and I thought I could use a similar technique to evoke leafy plants around the okapi.

Photo of one of my coral marquetry pieces

Photo: John Polak Photography

The pattern for my okapi cabinet was more complex, because I made overlapping layers of foliage. I made a test piece before I committed to the idea, since I was concerned that the veneer would fall apart when I started cutting the second layer. With a lot of preparation and tape to keep the wood intact, the technique was successful.

Close-up photo of the scroll saw in the process of cutting the foliage pattern into some veneer

For the structure of my cabinet, I got inspiration from French Art Deco designer Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. Many of Ruhlmann’s furniture designs feature torpedo-shaped legs that start part-way up the case of the piece, flare out, and then taper down to the floor.

Photo of a Ruhlmann cabinet at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra via Flickr (shared under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

Photo of a Ruhlmann cabinet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons (shared under Creative Commons license CC0)

I also decided that the case of the cabinet would be a trapezoid with curved sides. If all this sounds like a very complicated design for a cabinet, you are correct!