Anything is possible when you have the worlds finest team of craft people.  Masters of the arts of wood carving, carpentry and joinery, masters of marble sculpture and inlay, and masters of ceramics Sculpture and glazing all collaborated with me on this one.                                   A gazebo as a focal point in a magnificent garden

overlooking the golf course of the Los Angeles country club.   It is a stopping point on a walkway by a cascading steam, overlooking a pond.

This is a little quote about Gazebos from Wikipedea.

The gazebo is very common in landscape architecture.  Gazebos include pagodas, pavilions, kiosks, alhambras, belvederes, follies, pergolas and rotundas.  Such structures are popular in warm and sunny climates. They are in the literature of China, Persia and many other classical civilizations, going back to several millennia.   The word origin is unknown and has no cognates in other European languages. False etymologies are proposed, such as the French Que c’est beau (“How beautiful”) and the Macaronic Latin gazebo (“I shall gaze”). L.L. Bacon proposed a derivation from Casbah a Muslim quarter around the citadel in Algiers. W. Sayers proposed Hispano-Arabic qushaybah, in a poem by Cordoban poet Ibn Quzman (d. 1160).

All great landscapes must have vistas and destinations for repose.  All great landscape must have special features that entice with beauty and intrigue and cause the visitor to wander around and appreciate the plants and the tress on the way, and then have places to sit and enjoy the view.

The Gazebo serves just that function.  It could be a mini Tudor cottage with attached roof, It could be a thai pagoda or a sunken grotto with rococo caves.    Gazebo,  some say its the shakespearean word for the Videbo.  The latin word for the the thing to gaze at. These are the places that are designed to take the person out of the tomfooleries of life and into a state of playful fulfillment of the senses. These are garden temples for enjoyment only.  Some are follies,  all of them are an art form of architecture.

Inside we would duplicated the fantastic Guanyin figure that is the center piece of the Nelson Atkins museum in Kansas City. The carvers went there to study that masterpiece from the Song Dynasty, and then using the most even grain of woods called Jelutong, they carved this piece in full 3 dimensional format over a period of several  months. As a background to the figure, we produced a sculpted landscape mural.

Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rice paper Shoji screens with a mirror frame spanning the two.

Within the design of an ancient canoe prow there lies the essential thought of the people for whom it was created.  The curves and frills of the surfing waves inspired those artists from Oceania of South East Asia. From the same region the stopper for a magic potion bottle portrays an entire aesthetic of communion with a spirit world.  Earrings of worked gold from the island tribes portray shapes that have evolved beyond the reach of Euclidean geometry and European obsession with Realism. The art of the ancestors of the Asian southern sea are freed of such restrictions, and exude the playful humor of a life in a long house village in the jungled islands.  The freedom in art of this region, left me with a deep sense of inspiration.  I made doors and screens and furniture with this mood which I call the Jataka collection, a word borrowed from the sanskrit, meaning tales of past lives. I used papyrus, and burnished pine with wax finish, which kept the island feel, and yet fitted perfectly with modern style. All the woodwork in this collection is brushed and burnished with a raised grain texture and patinated finish. There are more pieces to come.