This past fall we had the honor of attending the wedding of two wonderful friends Rolf and Chris, both of whom are in our Nordic Dance group. Rolf is of Norwegian decent and Chris, Finnish, so I wanted to symbolize this union in a woodturning. I had recently completed various platter turnings using milk paint and carving and it gave me the idea to symbolize Rolf and Chris' marriage through the merging of their two countries flags which have a common blue cross.
I found the perfect maple blank at our local exoctic lumber mill. The light maple wood is close in color and grain pattern of the more common birch and juniper often used in Scandanavian woodworking.
I pyrographed the color borders for flags and then used the appropriate milk paint representative stip for the flags, leaving the white section the natural wood.
I was very happy with the final platter as it came out as I had envisioned and I think truly represents the spiritual and cultural merger of two wonder friends.
