Incy Wincy Spider table

Incy Wincy Spider oak coffee table with an inserted clear bar of leaves cast in epoxy. Legs of steel pipes

SOLD

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Incy Wincy Spider / Lille Peter Edderkop

F*ck. Time wasted! I can re-use the mould, but that damn spider! He must have rappelled down by his thread of silk. Arrgh! I look more closely, slide down my reading glasses from the crown of my head to the tip of my nose. Inspecting the damage I start feeling lucky. His legs stuck where he landed, close to the middle and far enough from the side that his legs didn't touch! Cooool! The piece was meant to be under another table, but now it deserved to be the centrepiece.

The full Danish Version of Incy Wincy Spider is not well known at all. The Danish title is translated to Little Peter Spider and was written by Knud Pfeiffer in 1948. The lyrics are about Peter's adventures:

After getting lost from his mother he crawled around and ended up in a hat. The hat belonged to a man and all of a sudden Peter was in the big city. He spun a web in a suitcase that brought him to America, where he met native chieftains, crawled to the top of skyscrapers before he got back in the suitcase again. The man took a ship, to return home again, and in a storm the ship lost course and harboured in Greenland. The moral of the lyrics is that you can do anything you put your mind to, just like Peter.

A pipe sprouts with seedlings in the legs of the Incy Wincy Spider coffee table

The real spider in the Incy Wincy Spider coffee table can be seen in the close up of the clear bar that is inserted in the table

A faucet watering a plant is in the legs of the Incy Wincy Spider coffee table

The real spider in the Incy Wincy Spider coffee table can be seen in the close up

Specifications

Size: L 140 x W 51x H 52cm (custom height min 48 cm, no maximum)
Surface treatment: OSMO hard wax oil
Materials: Oak, epoxy, artificial plants, steel pipes and 1 Danish spider
Imperfections: Handmade art

A stabiliser made of epoxy on the underside of the table

The process

Damn this table. The horizontal slots in the bottom are meant to prevent the tabletop from warping. They did not. I decided to clamp the table flat to my work table and route out channels for pouring in epoxy. I had to make it a bit fun for myself so I added some greenery for my own satisfaction.

The solution was a success, however it required me to plane both sides quite a bit. I routed the whole surface to create the smooth evenness that my pieces generally have. But, my friend, LouisGaret, a Flemish born artist, stopped by my workshop and put new ideas into my head. He pointed out the beauty in the uneven tracks left by the router. He suggested that I preserve them as a symbol of uniqueness and eloquence in knowing the work that has gone into the process. It was an eye opener, as I am a perfectionist at heart. I took it to heart and I stop, now and then, to be sure that I do preserve the natural beauty in a handmade piece. I was also reminded how important it is to receive and give critique to fellow artists.