Christy came to me with a very strong visual idea for an expandable dining table.  She had visions of a dramatic Art Deco-inspired base made of a big "X".  I designed a base with curved, bent-laminated shapes that joined in the center.  It was a crazy, nutty frenzy of construction: 24 layers of oak veneer in a big clamping form with glue squeezing everywhere.  But somehow, miraculously, it worked, and how.