Delaware Bay 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Delaware Bay 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Delaware Bay 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Delaware Bay 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Delaware Bay 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Delaware Bay 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall

Delaware Bay 3D Wood Map | Laser-Cut Birch Nautical Chart

$ 332.00
Size
Frame
24.5 x 31 in
Baltic birch, hand-stained water
Up to nine laser-cut birch layers
Carved bathymetric relief, laser-etched labels
Soundings: NOAA nautical survey data
How the Water Becomes Wood

A chart is a stack of flat sheets until the water's real soundings tell it what shape to take.

  1. SurveyReal bathymetric sounding data sets every contour line before a single cut is made.
  2. CutEach depth band is laser-cut from its own sheet of Baltic birch, up to nine layers deep.
  3. StainWater layers are stained by hand, reading darker the deeper the water runs.
  4. StackThe sheets are registered and stacked in sequence, and the bed's true shape rises out of the wood.
  5. EtchDepths and place names are burned into the grain itself, never printed on it.
  6. FrameA solid Baltic birch frame and acrylic glass finish the piece, ready to hang.

Delaware Bay in laser-cut Baltic birch, 24.5 by 31 inches: the broad funnel between two states carved one depth contour per layer, capes to river mouth.

Every spring, Delaware Bay hosts one of the natural world's great appointments: the largest horseshoe crab spawning on Earth crowds its beaches, and red knots arriving from the tip of South America time their entire migration to feast on the eggs. The rest of the year the bay works: the deep engraved ship channel carries Philadelphia's traffic up the middle past Ship John Shoal's lighthouse, the oyster schooner fleet's last survivor still sails out of the Maurice River, and the Cape May to Lewes ferry stitches the bay's mouth together across seventeen miles of open water. In the birch, the shipping channel's trench and the wide oyster-ground shallows tell the bay's two working lives.

Contours are laser-cut sheet by sheet, stacked by hand, engraved, and finished behind acrylic glass in a solid Baltic birch frame in Dark or Light.

Freighters, ferries, and forty thousand shorebirds share this water on schedule.

The engraving spans Cape May and Cape Henlopen, the channel and shoals, and the river reach toward Philadelphia. Companions: Cape May and Philadelphia.

  • 24.5 × 31 in
  • Solid Baltic birch frame in Dark or Light
  • Acrylic glass front, ready to hang
  • Free next-business-day shipping on orders placed by 2 PM EST
  • 14-day returns
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