Woodworker: Adrian Potter

Every school child in Australia learns that in 1770 Captain James Cook discovered the island continent and claimed it for Britain. To commemorate that event, Australian furniture maker Adrian Potter built this collector’s cabinet, with a little three-masted ship modeled on Cook’s Endeavour. Turn the ebony-handled crank, and the ship rides up and down on a rolling sea of wooden slats. The clever effect depends on the slats moving freely between the ribs of the hull. The style of the cabinet itself, with its 18th-century English Regency flavor, recalls Australia’s ties to the mother country. The primary wood Potter used, Australian red cedar, which he describes as “stable, durable, beautiful, and easily worked—up there with mahogany,” was quickly discovered by settlers and used nearly to extinction in the colonial period. Cook’s voyage sparked a long era of migration by ship to Australia—one fraught with forced voyages, sinkings, and mutinies—and Potter’s skeletal ship also reflects this darker side of Australia’s maritime history. It is named “SIEV-X” for an Indonesian fishing boat packed with Iraqi refugees that sank in 2001 on its way to Australia, killing more than 300 people. Photo: Grant Hancock How They Did It: Making Waves Audio Slideshow: Pro Portfolio on Adrian Potter: Thinking Furniture Back Cover of the May/June 2010 issue (FWW #212) VIDEO: Watch the Ship in Action