1 finely crafted furnishing can make the perfect statement for your home

With all respect to anti-clutter queen Marie Kondo, a home still needs furniture, just not so much. If you’re looking to beautify your nest, it may be worth springing for a stellar handmade piece in solid wood that makes a statement, rather than blowing your budget on, say, a factory-made dining room set.

The finely worked, one-of-a-kind items on view in Hawaii’s Woodshow, at the Honolulu Museum of Art School through Sunday, are the sorts of furnishings you can build a room around, organically, over time.

Take “Voyaging Table,” made by Tai Lake from monkeypod and wood from a fallen albizia tree. Its long, curved top is shaped like the sail of a Hawaiian canoe. A writer sitting at this elegant table might feel the winds of inspiration at his back.

You’ll never lack for conversation at Matthew J. D’Avella’s “Dining with Escher” table in gleaming koa, pheasantwood, mango, kiawe, black palm and abalone, its top geometrically patterned in its namesake’s trademark 3-D, trompe l’oeil style.

“While we got a lot of desks and tables, there’s not a single chair this year,” said Marian Yasuda, coordinator of the wood show, an annual juried event. “We never really know what we’re getting,” she added as she stood in the middle of the gallery and smiled at the varied array, which includes sculptures, musical instruments and a bicycle.

Wood that’s Hawaii-grown, salvaged or otherwise sustainably sourced is an emphasis of the show, which draws artists from throughout the islands, the mainland and abroad.

A show-stopping room divider and chest of drawers, R.W. Butts’ “Tansu Screen” uses 65 local woods — and a few black accent dots of ebony, Yasuda said. The golden, water-patterned panels are sculpted with sinuous carp, lily pads and rafts of bubbles.

Yasuda praised the wit and marquetry work in Shaun Fleming’s trompe l’oeil larder, which appears to be filled with local staples behind glass. “The method is almost like puzzle-making, using many small pieces of thin wood,” she said, pointing out shadows made by darkening wood edges with hot sand.

There are bowls galore, any one of which would easily elevate your digs. The hot colors that dwell in the heart of Norfolk Island pine are revealed in David K.Y. Chung’s translucent calabash, and Andy Cole’s set of classic calabashes are made of golden mango wood.

The luminous natural colors and mesmerizing patterns of all these shapes in different woods, designed and turned by masterful minds and hands, make it impossible not to dream of owning one.

And really, one is all you need.