Where craftsmen like Bruce Gray work, the line between furniture and art dissolves.
His remarkable coffee table “Earth,” recently acquired by the New Brunswick Museum, transforms rejected yellow birch into a meditation on time and nature. Through careful selection of local materials—from ocean-ground granite to deer antler—Gray creates more than functional furniture; he tells New Brunswick’s story through its natural resources, connecting people to place through objects of extraordinary beauty and meaning.
This coffee table, made by the 2019 Strathbutler laureate Bruce Gray of Kars, NB, was acquired as part of the ongoing development of the Sheila Hugh Mackay Collection of Strathbutler Award Winners at the New Brunswick Museum. You can see this remarkable piece in Image 1, which shows the completed “Earth” table with its distinctive curly yellow birch surface and natural material accents.
Gray’s recent work, Earth (2020), is made from a unique piece of live-edge, curly yellow birch accented with granite, sand and deer antler. The table speaks to the interconnectedness of elements in the natural world. The stone and sand are meant to represent the earth, the antler is the sky and the wooden top indicates the passage of time as well as the idea of space. Image 2 offers a portrait of Bruce Gray from 2020, providing a face to the masterful craftsman behind this work.
Interwoven with this concept is the unusual arrangement and shape of the table legs – they are off-set and wider apart at one end of the table – which evokes the sense of an animal and movement. Gray’s inspiration is carefully considered. The annual growth rings of the cross-section of wood, the granite and sand and the multi-pointed antler speak directly to the passage of time. Image 3 shows the early stages of his process, sawing the log that would become this exceptional table.
The embedding of the granite, sand and antler into the surface plane of the table top reinforces the unity of all the parts. In its functionality, this coffee table proudly displays its decorative art heritage while simultaneously making an artistic statement about time and the environment – their eternity and fragility. Gray’s methodical approach to design is evident in Image 4, which shows his preliminary plans for the table, and Image 5, which displays the original mock-up he created.
All the materials Gray used for this work originated in New Brunswick, including: wood from a rejected yellow birch log that was purchased from the Fredericton Ranger School in 2005; a sea-smoothed stone from along the shore at Deep Cove, Grand Manan; “traction” sand from Kingsclear; and an antler from the Kinghorne Deer Farm on Grand Manan. The provincial associations of these local materials reinforce the overall significance of this creation.
The creation process involved multiple careful steps, as can be seen in Image 6, showing the glue-up phase, Image 7, depicting Gray refining the hole for the antler by hand, and Image 8, where he experiments with sand recess depth set duration. The artist’s precise technique continues in Image 9 as he cuts the recess by eye, followed by Image 10 and Image 11 which document the sand application and completed sand fill. The integration of the deer antler, shown in Image 12 with its threaded brass insert mount, completes the assembly of natural elements. Image 13 provides another view of the finished table, allowing visitors to appreciate its harmonious design from a different perspective.
This coffee table is a powerful piece that transcends the boundaries between art and craft. It is a very worthy addition to the New Brunswick Museum’s Sheila Hugh Mackay Collection of Strathbutler Award Winners – a selection of contemporary artworks that compel us to reconsider some of the traditional definitions that characterize the visual arts in New Brunswick.
