This is one of those projects that has no real functional use but is for only artistic expression. I have been thinking about this piece for a few months and finally had a rough enough form in my head to draw it up with the 3D drawing package. Below the left drawing is what I would call the first version. It’s not the first iteration as there were about half a dozen or so rough attempts before this one emerged. On the right is the same piece where I added some of the potential materials.
The next version on the left got two caps added to the ends of the body arc since the end of the arc looked unfinished to me. To me they act to terminate the flow of the body arc. Further refinement adding more definition and highlighting the joint between the cherry and blackwood is a thin band of inlayed turquoise.
In looking at the body arc group I decided that to add a little ridge to break the smooth curve across its face. The red arrow points to the ridge’s location at the edge of the blackwood piece and the inset shows an enlarged view of the inner piece. 
To add some interest to the outer body arc I took a look at adding a thin maple spacer between the cherry pieces that will get glued together to make the piece. The spacing is based on mathematical Fibonacci sequence. To get the sequence to fit within the overall width required a bit of work using an Excel spreadsheet. What I thought was a good idea ended up making the piece look a bit like a Zebra and was way too distracting so it got discarded. It just goes to show not all ideas that sound good actually are.
With the front design looking pretty good I took a look from the top of just the body arc with the blackwood caps removed to see how that looked which is shown in the top photo. The body looked a bit too thick and bulky so I narrowed the group by about ½ an inch to give me the bottom profile that looked a lot sleeker.
Changing the thickness of the body arc group required a resizing of the arc end caps which was easy to do. However, that got me thinking that nearly everything in the whole piece is curved except for the caps so they got changed to follow the cross-sectional shape of the body arc. They also get tapered from the center line of the top to its edge. The renderings below show a front and top view along with an enlarged detail of the blackwood cap looking from the inside out. The caps may undergo additional changes when I get to that point in the build as I am not sure if I want to curve the tops of the caps instead of putting a flat taper on them as now shown.
My choice for materials developed along with the drawings. With cherry being one of my favorite woods to work with I decided to use it as the main material. I wanted the inner part of the body arc and the caps to be a contrasting wood and I looked at both light and dark materials. Black ended up looking the best due in part to its contrast to the turquoise inlay. Since the availability of truly black wood is limited and very expensive an alternate was needed. One that has worked well for me is either oak or cherry dyed with India Ink. For this piece oak will be used because when dyed and finished the grain of the oak will still be visible whereas the cherry could end up looking like a piece of featureless plastic. This leaves the center bowl and finial. I wanted a figured wood for these pieces and selected leopardwood. Based on these decisions I made a test piece out of cherry to see how the meeting of the body’s three materials (blackwood, turquoise and cherry) would look. The photo below shows the progression from filling a saw kerf cut into the cherry test piece with turquoise for the band to the finished sample and I have to say the black is pretty featureless. 
With the design fairly well set the next step is to go through my stack of material and pull out the pieces that more or less will probably be needed that is unless I decide to change my mind part way through the build.
Next Up – Materials, Making the Blank & a Problem
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