After I graduated with a degree in furniture design (would you like fries with that?) I was offered an informal critique with a FOAF who worked for Wendell Castle. Apart from being very helpful and insightful, he called attention to an aspect of my work that he said is pretty common especially with beginners and craft people, it is called "Woodiness."
It's marked by infatuation or even over use of different kinds of wood for the sake of different kinds of wood, sometimes gratuitously.
The music shelf, for example, is woody. From a design standpoint it makes more sense for the notes and bars to be the darker wood, like the ink on the page. As it is, it's mostly about the showing off figure of the maple.
Consider on the other hand, this piece by Ruhlmann,
it's made with highly figured veneer, inlaid with ivory. Yet I wouldn't call it woody. The figure is used as part of the design, the ivory accentuates the shape of the figure of the rosewood, it doesn't shout "Yo bitches, I'm ivory!" All of the elements of the design work towards the same goal.
The music bookshelf is undoubtedly cool and very well made and, for me, illustrates the difference between craft and art. And this IS the
crafty DIY thread.