Here's a winner by Michael Elkan, ca. 1980's. The box is cut from a single rough cut, quarter-sawn section of a large maple wood burl from the Pacific Northwest. From there, it's sliced on the horizontal a couple times with a bandsaw. The top cut becomes the box lid after a few routes around the bottom. Then, the middle gets drilled and cut, the bottom gets glued on, and voila: there's a box for your unmentionables, almost. After some machine sanding, 5 hours of hand-sanding and 5-10 coats of linseed oil, Michael Elkan probably sold this little prize for a lot more than I'm asking. I mean, I would after all that work.
The jewelry or keepsake box is a sculpture above all.
Elkan gained notoriety when George Nakashima began carrying Elkan's finest pieces in his New Hope, Pennsylvania gift shop. I guess that makes Elkan a pretty good woodworker. This box is an example of him being a rather good woodworker. A woodworker's woodworker, if you would.
