a bar

 well ok, heres a blast from the past ... we, or should i say, me and the guys who were working here with me in 2004 made this bar for a client at stratton mountain ski area, about a half hour to the southeast by car from my shop.  i had a request today from a potential client to look at an antique front bar he has purchased and to design and build a back bar and incorporate a sink and frig in the whole deal somewhere.  i havent been to see it yet, but i hope to get over to his house nearby to have a look next week. 

click the photos to enlarge them ...

 i like bars.  when i came to town here in 1971, i had been traveling the country for a couple years after penn state, looking for a place to live i was telling myself at the time.  actually, what i think i was looking for then was #1., a wife or significant other, and #2. something to do that didnt involve working late nights and sleeping half the day away.  the money was good though then and i got to live in some fancy spots along the way, fort lauderdale, the ocean reef club in key largo, washington dc, montauk, palm springs, and just before vermont, i made a brief trip to europe.  life was good.  and it got better when i met the wife, at the bar i was working in.  she went on to become the first female bartender there, and we are still friends with the gentlemen and his wife who hired me 44 years ago.  they were here for dinner last night. 

 ive made some bar like pieces of furniture, and i once helped build a 35 long, quicky commercial bar when i was a carpenter, but im hoping we get to build another small, intimate, classy home bar along these lines.

i was just learning my cad program in 2004 so the drawings are a bit cluttered, but obviously, they worked.  this was a challenging, fun project and it took me a good solid half hour to find the folder that the pictures were in.  that folder was entitled on site photos and it contained some real gems .. more on that, and hopefully, this project shortly ...

i can almost see that 2004 bar from here.  thats stratton mountain from the back yard, about 20 miles
away as the crown flies.  you can just see the top of mount snow behind it, another
15 or 20 miles to the due southeast of stratton.

all for now.

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the cherry bedroom piece

so how did we get from the sketch above ..

 to the piece we installed last tuesday ?  well, ill tell you, it didnt happen overnight.  click the photos to enlarge them ..

we started with this photo that was actually taken, i am surprised to note, on the 5th of february, 2013.

from that photo i made the collage above in photoshop, and though i cant find them now, i sketched four different concepts, from which i made the four slightly different cad drawings below.

and the winner is ...

  this one .. that was all fine and good to go and we had a deposit and we ordered the wood, and then ... another more time sensitive opportunity presented itself to us

at that time, my bedroom clients were in the process of raising their coastal connecticutt house that had been flooded by hurricane sandy 7 feet and doing a total remodel of that property, so they allowed to do a quick painted kitchen at another local house, and before we knew it that quick painted kitchen became about 5 months work.  so, in late october, we finally got around to using the cherry we bought back in march and got this project underway.  the original intent was a kind of shaker piece with minimalist details, but as we went on we had some consultations and added some detailing based loosely on this sideboard and a some of the other pieces we had created for the clients in the past.

 so on we went, adding details to the verticals of the face frames, an edge inlay on the main counter, borders on the drawer faces, custom cast drawer pulls, and paneled case ends.  that all took a minute.

ready for finish below

 until we finally arrived at last monday, the photo below, and the day before the installation when all the finished parts had to be finally glued and applied to the cases, final assembled and then 

disassembled yet again, and loaded into the van and the truck and carried up a flight of steps 

to be installed at the clients home.

 we had done a preinstallation level check and the room was remarkably level plumb square and true and we were able to move through the installation and clean up in a remarkably short amount of time.  all in, all done ... great project ... incredibly patient clients ... glad to have our shop back ...

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More cool things to do with your hood

The hood is a common piece of clothing for the mid and late medieval period. It is also very comfortable to wear, especially when it gets chilly outside, like at the moment in the Netherlands...

The hood has a standard way of wearing, but in the late medieval period people started experimenting wearing the hood differently, resulting in foppish styles. These styles are nicely illustrated in one of the blogposts of Tacuinum medievale. Personally, I like (and sometimes wear)  style 6.

But there are more things you can do with a hood than wearing it. Some examples are shown in  the margins of manuscript Bodleian MS 264 (Oxford University, Oxford, UK).

1. Playing blind-man.

The hood is put on backwards, so it covers the eyes and creates a blindfold. The liripipe is hanging like an elephants trunk in front.

In Blind Mans Buff, the blinded man has to try to tag one of the other players, while the other players try to avoid him. The other players have to make sounds to indicate the direction the blindfolded player in which has to move in order to tag another player. The player who is tagged becomes the next blind man.

Another variant is where the blinded player is guided along a difficult track by the other players.

 

Bodleian MS 264 folio 70 verso. A blinded elephant man on the left. 

2. Throwing games.

A knot is made in the hood, approximately at the point where the liripipe is attached to the hood. This creates a heavier point, making the hood easier to throw. The liripipe is used to swing the hood for the throw. This game is played by both males and females.

Bodleian MS 264 folio 130 recto. Males playing the throwing game.

The illustrations suggest that the hoods should be thrown towards another, or at a blinded person. We have tried several versions of this game: throwing and catching (catching scores points); throwing and hitting each other (hitting another scores points) and just throwing (the one farthest throwing scores points). Throwing and hitting each other resulted in chaos, while throwing and catching was a bit more playful. Just throwing and throwing and hitting were boring, but the latter became better when one person was coaching the blind man when to duck to avoid being hit by a hood.

Bodleian MS 264 folio 130 verso. Females playing the throwing game. 

A variant of this game was developed by us (i.e. we can not relate it directly to an illumination), in which the players wore a felt hat, which needed to be thrown of the head with the hood. Each successful hit to the hat was rewarded with one point, while the game was played for a certain amount of points. We thought this was a better variant, as each player has equal opportunities to hit and being hit, and the game allowed a lot of interplay. 

 

 

 

3. Catching Butterflies.

We have not tried this yet, as the butterfly season is over at the moment. The hood is held closed at one end, and open at the other end to trap the butterflies. Although some woman look like trying to hit rather than catch the butterflies. This seems to be a more feminine type of game.

Bodleian MS 264 folio 135 recto (more examples a shown in the margins of MS 264)

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a few of our favorite things

for many reasons, things come and go from the popular posts list over there to the right.  there are some posts though that i call on over and over when talking with potential clients.  and some of these posts, for whatever reason, are popular with me, but have never made the list.  the duck bed shown above and below was a collaboration between one of our favorite clients, our younger son will on the turning, carving and finishing and the older son sam on the metal carving and patinas. 

i got to do the cad drawing and lead the design parade.  there are four posts total in the construction description, but you can access all of them from the link above.  carving spirals, cnc work on the inlays, waterjetting the actual metal parts and patinas are all covered there.

this ones got it all .. three posts total, from adapting an existing design below to a new space, cross country contractor and architect communication, custom steel railings, secret compartments, shipping details to palo alto, on and on .. lots of headscratching ... much fun.

and this 1989 project is the original staircase we built for local clients that the palo alto folks found on my website.  we recently added the railing so there is a blog post about it at this link.  a version of this project was posted on facabook by a radio station in mississippi and it has been shared i see 567,855 times .. go figure

a greene and greene style sideboard .. drawings, construction details, fabricating the hinges and the pulls, the works ... many more photos here.

ahhh, the trout desk, dovetailing 28" wide walnut planks, houndstooth dovetails, and more, and below,

the bridges bench  both are part of our bethlehem steel series combining the efforts of sam, will and i to create collaborative pieces in wood and steel ... 

more pieces in this series at this link

and another example of the bench above for a local museum garden

another member of the bethlehem steel series by dan, sam and will

lots more stuff here along with thoughts on interior design and custom furniture

and then weve got our on line slide shows at this link  six years of work with albums on claro walnut tables, furniture from reclaimed lumber, stuff you can do with a cnc router, some of my digitized sketchbooks with sketch and finished piece ... thousands of photos there ..

the 11 foot copper top table

loads of fun .. new processes

pool tables ... always a pleasure .. i think we are working on number 17 right now

five easy pieces  .. in addition to this fun zebra wood dining table, there are four others in wenge, hickory and steel.  one of my first ever substantial blog posts.

more photos here

as always, you can consult the categories section for specific interests and the popular posts section for other things that m ight catch your eye ... happy reading.  comment with your questions and ill try to get back to you shortly ..
 also, there are slide shows available at this link that contain literally thousands of photos of our work ..
enjoy!!

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why we make things and why it matters

hmmmm ... i think peter korn has been looking over my shoulder for the last 40 years ... and, he has the way with words to get what he has been seeing down on paper so i can understand some of the things that flit through my brain just below my level of consciousness ... like things i try to verbalize sometimes when people ask me about how or why i started making furniture , and do i like it as much as i seem to? etc .. i didnt always know how to answer those questions, but now, some of it has kind of been explained it to me through mr. korns book.  my friends bill and steve and pete and all the other folks i know who have been struggling through making a living as furniture makers, builders, potters, glass blowers, masons and sculptors for the last 35 years, are part of a cultural thing, and, as mr. korn says, most craftspeople he knows kind of stumbled into the party while they were looking for a good life.  amen to that.  in the 60s and 70s we were in fact searching.  back to the land .. self sufficiency .. organic gardening with sam ogden ... living the good life with helen and scott nearing .. an alternative path to the life most people the generation before us, (our parents), were living.

when i started as a carpenter in 1973, like peter, i was fascinated by the problem solving aspects of the job. then the dexterity and skill thing relating to quality added another level of challenge and interest.  from there, it took just one short lay off from my carpentry job in 1979 to transition to full time furniture making, and ultimately, the good life i was seeking.  i have been lucky, i am the first to admit.  building stuff has been very good to me.  i have had the benefit of a supportive family and community, and amazingly, a steady supply of wonderful and interesting clients.  i have worked hard for sure, but its never really, and still doesnt really, feel exactly like work .. its just what i do, and how my life goes.  peters path was similar to mine to start, but along the way, after experiencing a bout with cancer, and a typical struggle to make a living building furniture, his path moved away from furniture design and building, and into education and school building.  but, his roots are my roots.  his background thoughts are my background thoughts.  the engaged pursuit of quality is a rewarding pursuit that as furniture makers, or any other kind of artist or artisan, we get to buck up to everyday.  in my humble opinion, the engaged pursuit of quality is a concept for everyone to pursue daily in his or her field of endeavor.  its a great concept.

i also like what peter has to say about design, and how it begins with two things, the intention to create and a problem to be solved.  and how it is a skill like any other and can be learned, which i can attest to personally, as i had not a clue about design when i started making stuff ... kit was the one with eye, and she painstakingly taught me how to see ... four years of college and a degree, and not one single art course.  design can be learned, and some people take to it more easily than others for sure, but if you put in your time and choose your references carefully, you can most likely find you own voice.

another thing peter discusses that is important to me now is that as his focus changed from furniture making to school making, his work changed from working with things to working with words, and one of his biggest surprises was how much he took to writing.  that has also been a surprise to me too after 700+ posts and six years of writing this blog.  i spent 16 years getting a formal education, during which i avoided writing pretty much at all costs.  now, for me, as for him, it is just another medium through which we think.  as peter mentions for himself, (now that he has pointed it out), working with wood, words, (and for me the five other people in my shop), are all different forms of the same essential endeavor.  anyway, the book is a good read if youre looking to think about why we make stuff and why that is a good and important process.  friends who have attended his school have good things to say about it, and at some point, i am planning to pay him a visit up there on the coast of maine ... enjoy!  you may not fold over as many pages as i did, but there is something there for everyone ...

more info, more book reviews, and interviews at this link

and lastly on the why we make things subject, i remember reading something recently that bono said in rolling stone regarding lou reeds passing.  i cant find the exact quote, but he said something about lou like this:

 the nice thing about people who spend their whole life making things is that 

after they go, we still have the things. 

2/13/14 .. found it ... heres the actual quote

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