Peter Schlebecker

Here is the Tambour Butsudan with the doors open.

View of Major Ellipse with the doors closed

Full of curves everywhere, this altar set in the Art Deco style is the one I chose for myself, and I have made several of these in different colors. The lower cabinet has doors and a pull - out drawer for storage.

Here is the Art Deco Butsudan in Walnut with Black lacquer trim. Note that the lower cabinet is not as high as the previous picture because the client asked for that modification since she always kneels when chanting.

I made this Altar set for myself over 25 years ago and the moving company lost (Stole!) the Butsudan cabinet in our recent move to California. I got paid enough for the loss to buy the materials for a new Butsudan. It is very similar to the original but was modified to allow the addition of the gold leaf Art Deco style wings. This was accomplished by not including the curve in the Butsudan doors.

Here it is with the doors open. The back is gold leaf like the wings on the front.

I designed this Butsudan over 30 years ago and it still looks great. I had learned the curving technique called coopering which allowed me to design a Butsudan with concave doors that when open, nest into the curved sides and become almost invisible. I liked the idea of a monolithic base with delicate tables that seemed to dance around it. The front table has a hand-cut through dovetailed drawer. Made of Jatoba and Rosewood.

I have always loved Shoji screen and have made a lot of variations of it in furniture. Now I bring it to a Smaller Butsudan made of Bass wood, which will stay light colored, and is lightweight and very stable. It includes an LED light but the switch is on the power cord outside the Butsudan. The rice paper is a special laminated type that is fire resistant and cleanable, but still has the beautiful “cloud dragon” pattern in it.

This is my number one selling Butsudan. Clean lines, beautiful proportions, and doors that fold away from the corners make it truly elegant, and the price is very affordable. Seen here in Lacewood and Jatoba. I have made the same Butsudan with different styles of tables, see the next photo called “Curved Elegance”

Here is the Elegance Butsudan with an altar set that has curved shoulders on the tables. Shown here in Cherry and Jatoba.

Made out of Teak and Walnut, this Butsudan for the small Omamori Gohonzon protects and displays the Gohonzon in a respectful way. I have made this Butsudan for the old silver locket type, the white plastic type that only opens about 120 degrees (shown here), and for the newer white plastic type that opens 180 degrees. Teak is one of the only woods that can be cut very thin and yet not warp. For the white plastic lockets, the side that has no door is balanced by a white plastic field. The locket is placed into the Butsudan through the back and is held securely in place by a sliding panel.

Designed to be extremely strong, lightweight, and beautiful, this chair also can knock-down to fit in a smaller box for shipping.

A floor lamp with billowing sails, LED light bars and touch on/off/dim. Made of bleached European curly Sycamore. I plan to design a metal version of this lamp.

I designed this set of 6 dining chairs as a modern take on the traditional ladder back chair. I designed the back of the chair to resemble the lapstrakes on a ship, using steam bending to shape the wood, similar to the method used to build ships. The three legged design comes from the time when men typically wore swords on the waist; the sword conveniently misses the back of the chair. Made of natural and dyed Ash wood.

Another set of chairs were made with a table to match.

I designed this chair while working at Rock Paper Robot, with the input of some talented engineers. You can see that the chair folds down to a flat panel that can be hung on the wall. To see more about how it folds and opens, and how to purchase this chair, go to rockpaperrobot.com.

Here is a set of chairs with a table that folds down from the wall.

Triangle Central is a triangular shaped built-in cabinet that divides a kitchen/dining room from a sitting area. I had to incorporate the HVAC system into the cabinets so the yellow columns are actually the ductwork.

This is a prototype for a chair that I designed based on a little brochure stand that I made while at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, ME.

Most bookcases have straight vertical sides and I wanted to do something more playful. The wiggly sides are intended to describe the path of a boomerang, and the inner surfaces are covered with a retro formica with little boomerangs on it that was used a lot in 1950’s diners.

The Wardrobe was designed to go with other Arts and Crafts style furniture in the room, like the file cabinets next to it.

In Japanese culture, it is common to kneel on the floor. This kneeler takes the weight off of the ankles and the little bump under the ankles allows the ankles to be straight. The common version of this is a simple angled bench but I wanted to take it to a different level.

This bench is cantilevered off the wall and there is a Neon sculpture above it. The inlay work on the front mimics curved neon tube and the neon transformers are actually mounted on the underside of the bench. One of the Wenge discs on the end is the switch for the Neon Sculpture.

“View from the Ancestral Hearth” Is a folding screen inspired by African art. The motif of skins drying on frames and the cross hatching on the frames came from the practices of many cultures around the world. The designs on the panels are intended to resemble how trees look at night, illuminated by the glow of a campfire. How many thousands of generations have looked at this scene? The light-colored Ash wood has been ebonized using a chemical reaction and the tree design was made by reversing that reaction.

Stargazer came from my imagination as I looked in awe at the Milky Way galaxy splashed across the Maine night sky. It is in the form of two back-to-back chaises that form a long swoop. You can recline at either end and it puts you in the position to look up at the night sky. I have used a chemical reaction process to create an abstracted star scape across the full length of the piece, in the way the Milky Way takes up one’s whole span of vision. Stargazer is made of steam-bent and laminated Ash wood, with a transparent fiberglass coating that can resist the elements outdoors.

The abstracted starscape.

I had a log of spalted maple cut up on a bandsaw mill and what I saw inside was so spectacular that I had to showcase it using the framework of a shoji screen. It looks like the bare hills of blueberry barrens or rolling waves on the ocean. There is even a sunset in the sky.

Breath of Light is a lamp that appears to be a flat panel until it is turned on. A blower fills a nylon bladder that opens the vanes on the front as it expands, similar to the way the ribs of the human chest rise and fall to expand the chest cavity when breathing. Made of Paduak and Brushed Aluminum. See Video below.

Breathing Drawers is based on my personal experience of singing in a rock band, and the physical nature of the bones and musculature involved in breathing. The diaphragm of the chest acts like a piston, and so do well-fit drawers. Breathing Drawers is made of Basswood and Mahogany with a cast silicone skin that makes it look like rice paper on a shoji screen. The silicone skin billows in and out as the tightly fit drawers force the air into the case like pistons. The only way to open the lower drawer is by pushing the top drawer in quickly, which provides enough air pressure to force the lower drawer out. Beneath the silicone skin there is an inner white case with drawings of musculature from the book “Grey’s anatomy”. When the skin is sucked inwards, the drawings are visible for a brief moment as the translucent skin touches it. Watch the video below.

Balancing Act is a kinetic sculpture that is about 6 feel tall and only 9” square at the base but no matter how you push it, it always rights itself in a sinuous motion. I was watching my son jumping on a trampoline and was amazed at the human ability to balance itself. There is a moment when a new viewer pushes it that it seems like it is going to fall over, and I like that it makes one feel that same way that I did, fearing that my son would get hurt. Made of Western Red Cedar, limestone and Lead. See the video below.

Dancing in Negative Space is in the form of two chairs, which when put together face-to-face form a circle of abstracted human figures dancing wildly around a campfire. If you look more closely, however, you will see that the real figures are outlined in the negative space between the wooden forms. One chair is male and the other female as you can see in the detail photos below.

Female

Male

Made of Aluminum and Cypress, this bench is a vessel that can hold anything in the troughs in the middle. Inspired by the tidal river near my home on Cape Cod, I usually display it full of beach sand and gravel.

I have done a number of small lamps that use deconstructed Shoji screen as the motif for emotional expressions. This one uses electroluminescent film for the lighting element. The first of the stages is the traditional shoji appearance, the second starts to break out of that mold a little by weaving in and out, the third stage goes wild in a three dimensional grid, the fourth becomes focused and ambitious in climbing a set of stairs, and the fifth takes off and leaves the grid altogether.

The light bulb is at the top of the lamp, but the structure makes the light and shadows give the appearance of a rocket taking off.

The women of South Africa’s Ndebele people paint their houses with amazing designs, some traditional, some abstracted from modern life. I was so taken by the designs that I had to incorporate them in a Coffee table.

My response to the plane crashes of 9/11. Painted steel. I want to repaint this in black.

Sakura Bonsai was inspired by the cherry trees that bloom all around the Washington, DC area where I grew up. A Japanese women who was my Buddhist mentor passed away in the month of April, she said she wanted to hold out so she could see the cherry blossoms one more time.