Gallery: A Cross Section of the Sea Floor, Recreated in a Coffee Table

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    Christopher Duffy
    01

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    Christopher Duffy is a British designer who works in trompe l’oeils.
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    Christopher Duffy
    02

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    The surface of his latest piece, the Abyss Horizon table, looks like a bathymetric map of the ocean floor, rendered in 3-D.
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    Christopher Duffy
    03

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    He based its contours on actual maps, culled from oceanographers around the world, and Duffy brought the shapes to life with the help of hundreds of pieces of cut glass and birch wood, which he stacked together like a jigsaw puzzle.
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    Christopher Duffy
    04

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    With those maps, Duffy says, “I was looking for an abyss, a really deep, deep zone, and a shallow zone. The high points and shallow points, the nooks and crannies, that’s where it gets interesting.”
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    Christopher Duffy
    05

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    Milling the layers and layers of glass and wood and fitting them together takes three months, Duffy says. Besides getting measurements right, down to the millimeter, the process requires wedging slabs of glass and wood into an airtight formation.
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    Christopher Duffy
    06

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    If it were off by even a hair, it would ruin the illusion.
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