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Hey Friends!  Today I am going to talk a little bit more about those wood and leather panels in Anthony’s bar area.  As I said before, this area was an obvious focal point and therefore needed to boast something special.  If you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that Tim and I aren’t just about creating good looking rooms, but spaces that tell a story- spaces that are meaningful to the people who live there.  We also love using digital fabrication (tools controlled by computers) to make highly intricate and personalized pieces for our clients.

So, as I was thinking through the possibilities for this area, I decided to focus on Anthony’s love for football.  If you’ve been a college athlete, you know that the sport you played was more than a hobby, more than something you were just good at.  It was a passion, something that made you who you are today.  It gave you confidence and taught you the value of hard work and being part of a team.  Yes, when you’ve poured that much of your life into a sport, it deserves to be honored and celebrated.  So, how did I come up with the pattern for these panels?  There were two things that played a part:

#1- One reason we chose this pattern had to do with the shape of a football itself.  Being a 3-D object, I had to simplify the shape of the ball.  So, we decided to disassemble one.

When we undid all the stitching and laid out the individual pieces, these are the shapes we got.

Once we had the shapes, it was all about placing them in a pattern that was pleasing to the eye.  Much to our delight the pattern we ended up with also mimics the logo of the Pittsburgh Steelers (Ant’s favorite football team).  We simply repeated the shape several times and created the pattern now covering the walls. I chose to use leather because of it’s obvious relationship to an actual football.

Once we had the pattern, I decided that I would like the leather pieces to be inset into wood panels. We used a CNC machine to route out perfectly uniform shapes for our leather pieces. The wood, which I stained  a lovely aged gray color, creates a nice contrast against the leather and adds another manly texture to the space.

In the end, I wanted to add just a little something extra special that really identified this as Anthony’s space..  I chose two shapes on each side and laser etched Anthony’s signature (as if he signed the football) and the University of Tulsa’s logo (where he played college ball) onto the pieces.  I love these personalized touches and I think Anthony appreciates them as well. 🙂

So, there’s the story of these personalized panels and how they came to be.