RH MODERN: Page 155 / MONROE METAL & WOOD TABLES

Introduction

It is important for us to always remember and deeply connect with the things that fill us with inspiration. A lot of the happiness and joy is missing in our lives from a lack of intentionally inspiring ourselves with the world around us.

I recently stumbled across an old catalog sent to my wife who told me to have this shipment stopped as the catalog was over 500 pages.

The catalog caught my eye again and I thumbed through it to find some of the most exquisite design I had seen. It was from a company called RH Modern based out of San Francisco, California.

I mulled around the site and was reminded that RH stood for restoration hardware and this catalog was sent because we asked for it. Their show room is worth spending hours in, because they demonstrate how the rustic aesthetic can be extended in all areas of the home.

I brought the catalog near my computer as I was keeping track of the other series I have going on Steemit.

• Upvote Art
• Steemit Logo Art
• Cover Art

All three of those series are like very long brainstorming sessions. I use your upvotes to determine which designs are chosen for the seasonal lines of NAUTEE APPAREL.

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I want to give a special thanks to @teamsteem for their recent order. Keep a look out as he plans to wear his order in an upcoming post.

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On a high level, all those series focus on outward results. The design comes from within me, but eventually will be seen in the physical world.

I wanted to make a new series where the end result or the final product was the digital version.

RH MODERN's novel-length catalog featured furniture, room decor, and an exquisite page layout that strongly resonated with me. I figured I should try to recreate at least 100 of these products.

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Process

If you have never heard of Maxwell Render, it is a powerful render engine that can add a photorealistic layer to a digital design. I have used it in my Google Sketchup plugin to make products for my activity on quirky.com, for other clients, and occasionally for the steemit art series.

Here is a snapshot of the materials page:

I have spent hours on this page mostly due to the difficulty in accepting that these images are not photographs of physical materials.

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Here is a snapshot of page 155.

This is a Monroe Square Side Table in Walnut with brass, grey with polished stainless steel, Espresso with bronze, and Espresso with polished stainless steel.

I am going to cheat a little and just choose four types of wood render materials, polished stainless steel for 3 bases, and 1 bronze / golden base.

I do want to place the four chairs on that textured reflective floor.

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The biggest questions I need to answer are: How thick are the vertical parts of the base? What is the ratio of height to length for the table?

If I can answer those two questions everything else should fall into place.

Inkscape has a feature that allows you to use a digital ruler to measure vectors or images.

The upper square has a side measuring at 55 mm, the lower square has a side measuring at 63 mm, and the height of the table is 97 mm.

I know that these numbers are slightly incorrect based on the angle of the table photograph, but I am looking to get close enough to the original so it looks real.

I can use the difference between the bottom and top square, which is 8mm and use half of the difference to make a border around the top square.

The inner square will hold and I can drag down the sides, or reverse extrude the extra triangular prisms.

The center of the table is hollow and this effect can be achieved by making a copy of the original part, shrinking it in all dimensions by 4%, and stretching the sides so the duplicate part (in red) goes through the original. This red shape pierces the original part to make a large hole.

I can rotate that duplicated and stretched part 90 degrees and remove it from the original.

I can use the top square to make a slightly small square that will be assigned the wood texture.

I am pretty much done. I just need to assign a color to a material. Earlier I said I would use four types of wood and two types of metals. Since getting materials is easy I will use three types of metals, just like the original image.

I found these four wooden materials for the upper wooden table surface.

Each of these colors will be replaced with a material file. I picked distinct colors to make things easy.

I found a volcanic ash linoleum and used that for the flooring. The reflectivity is high, but gets the job done.