Michael Gill is not a minimalist kind of guy – ‘more is more’ might be his mantra. Thirty-six years in the making, his Sydney Harbour Cocktail Cabinet was built to make a statement, and at five metres in length, it is, as he says, ‘enormous’. ‘If you’re going to do something well, you may as well overdo it!’, he said.
An enduring labour of love, Michael’s ‘life’s masterpiece’ is intricately constructed, ornate, and a monument to Art Deco inspiration and his love of Sydney.
Why the Sydney Harbour Bridge?
The idea for making it was born decades ago when he and eight other woodworkers got together and formed the Woodworkers Group of NSW. The self-dubbed ‘junta’ all sported beards (‘we were very period people’), and met regularly to plan exhibitions and ‘bore each other with woodworking stories’.
‘One night we were drinking wine and whinging about how hard it was to earn a living as a woodworker in Australia with all the imports coming in. I went home and
