Hi, this is John. Thank you for coming to another edition of Box Talk. We are going to look at this presentation box for a water sculpture by the designer Maya Lin. She likes to call herself a designer and not an architect. She was the youngest person to design a very famous-- the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC at the age of 21.

And she has been also involved in many environmental issues. Her non-profit organization is called What Is Missing. And she focuses on different species that are endangered in the world, and also other environmental concerns. And this project has to do with that, and as part of that foundation's fundraising, and part of her design efforts. This is called Seven Square Inches of Water. It is a sculpture, I'll show you the sculpture.

First, it's a polymer sculpture that has a very cool translucent, bluish, aqua color. Obviously reminiscent of water. And it has a three dimensional look of waves of water in motion. Coincidentally, this morning I was reading some Haiku, which I have an interest in, and probably the most famous Haiku by the Japanese Haiku artist, Basho, is called "The Frog."

And it goes, "The old pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of water." So maybe you can't hear the sound of this water, but it goes very well with this project. So let me talk a little bit about the construction, and what they were trying to achieve, and how we came about making this. They wanted, obviously, a blue colored material. They wanted, first of all, a simple box. There's no closure like magnets or Velcro.

This is a tray and a three panel folder. This pad here is called a French panel, and that helps keep the box closed, they didn't want anything fancier than that. But this pad also keeps the sculpture secure in the box. There is foam padding underneath the material so that the piece is secure in the box when it's being shipped to a client or a customer. So we used a textured linen book cloth, this is a Midnight blue iris, which is a German manufactured book cloth that's used in bookbinding and in high end packaging.

The inside, they wanted a little contrast, but also complementary. And we use the same iris, but in a light muted grayish blue color called smoke. And if you look at it, you can see the contrast, but also it brings out the blue in the water, the aqua color of the water sculpture. They were very pleased with it, and we were as well. The whole color combination presentation went very well with the product and what they were trying to achieve.

Tray is constructed out of an Eska Board, which is a very rigid type box construction board. The sculpture goes into an insert, and a platform. Maya wanted the sculpture to be raised above the platform by a certain amount. So you can see the dimensionality of it. But again, also it needed to be secure in the box. So the French panel when closed protects the top of the sculpture.

You can see that on the top, she wanted the same movement of water, but in a simple presentation. So what we did was did a foil stamping with a matte silver foil on the cover. And if you look at it as if you're looking at the box, the water comes towards you, the viewer. That's our presentation about this box by Maya Lin. And I hope that maybe you would get a sense of the movement of water in this sculpture, and in this presentation.