Photo by Ramon Mareno
Here’s a luxe gift for your father’s office or study: inlaid maps by Minneapolis woodworker Dan Bredemeier. The 41-by-64-inch map of the world, above, is custom framed in padauk. It features 123 different wood veneers, including koa (used for the Hawaiian islands), coppery kewazinga (for Greenland), tamo ash (for Khazakstan), amboyna burl (for the Borneo islands), and shimmering quilted maple (for the oceans). Bredemeier has dabbled in inlaid maps since 1991, but it wasn’t until he exhibited at the Minnesota State Fair last year—and sold eight maps of Minnesota for $2,000 each—that he realized he was on to something. He quit his job as an assistant manager at Rockler Woodworking and Hardware to devote his waking hours to wood and cartography, customizing his marquetry maps for all sorts of clients, including a Mayo doctor who requested an enormous map of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth covered in the author’s famous invented languages: Black Speech, Dwarvish, and Elvish. Bredemeier’s large-scale maps of the world start at around $3,000. Find him at www.woodenmaps.com or by calling 612-824-0794.
