It's not often that I get excited about a new tool - after all, while new and useful gadgets do appear on the market from time to time, the old standbys of saw, hammer, screwdriver, pliers and wrench seem to be working just fine for awhile now. Advertised as a decking wrench, this untique $40 tool would be good in many other applications as well, including subfloor & fencing installation.
The Cepco BW-2 "BoWrench Decking Tool
In addition to their beautiful furniture, Berkeley Mills also brings their blended Japanese / Arts & Crafts aesthetic to kitchen design. The Wabisabi kitchen (pictured) is both minimalist Japanese and Craftsman; the Madera is a deceptively simple design with plenty of light and horizontal lines; the Sereno blends a variety of different natural surfaces into smooth modern lines, and their custom Arts & Crafts kitchen installations [one / two] bring the Berkeley Mills maple-based aesthetic into the most important room in the house - well, in my house at least.
Of course, this latest foray into interior architecture is not really that much of a departure for this group of master cabinetmakers; they've been making built-ins, doors, shoji and other finish carpentry for many years. If anything, this addition to their catalog is more a formalization of something they've been doing quite awhile than anything really new.
Stu Crick is President of the Washington (DC) Woodworkers' Guild and, from his fathers' woodshop through the restoration and remodeling of several homes, has been a woodworker for most of his life. Today, he builds furniture strongly influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movement, with Stickley-esque legs - "four highly-figured solid quarter-sawn pieces," interlocked with a locking-mitre joint. Squared-off spindles on Stu's tables are reminiscent of Prairie school work, and inlaid pegs and splines suggest Greene & Greene's best furniture. Stew describes his own influences:
While there are many influences that effect the creation of my furniture, the principle influence is the wood itself. George Nakashima, in his book The Soul of a Tree, describes how each piece of wood has a specific purpose that it reveals to the woodworker. This is the philosophy that guides me as I build furniture. I search for wood with a unique character and figure that harmonizes with each part of my furniture. I rarely stain or color the wood, instead preferring to hand-rub an oil finish that allows the woods figure to dominate the design.
take a look at a gallery of Stu's work
Chris Henry, aka Flickr user somefoolonline, recently finished a bit of remodeling that included a cutout between his kitchen and dining room. Not a big deal, you say. I've seen plenty of cutouts, you say. But have you ever seen one as nice as this? I don't think so. The combination of paint color, vintage stove, the beautifully-finished wood and the rooms themselves are absolutely sublime. I'd certainly like to see more of their home if it looks anything like this!
The Cleveland Plain Dealer's always-useful Ask an Expert column dealt this past week with something we all need to be concerned about but often overlook: caring for our hardwood floors.
Q: I have a beautiful 1925 Craftsman bungalow. The house is blessed with wood floors. I have noticed a black spot near the doorway to the kitchen (a heavy-traffic area) and also in the corner of the family room (a not-so-heavy-traffic area). What are my options in dealing with theses spots? And, more importantly, where do they come from so I can stop them from coming back? There are no leaks anywhere near the spots, and the floor is always dry (except when I mop). Do you have any suggestions on types of cleaners I can use to keep the floors looking shiny and new? I've been using Murphy's Oil Soap. - D.W., Bedford
A: From Roger Somogyi of Lamb Floor Fashion Center (30840 Lake Shore Blvd., Willowick, 440-943-6722):
As you know, hardwood floors are natural, beautiful and timeless. Caring and consistent proper cleaning and maintenance will ensure that they remain that way.
As for the black spots, I would have to assume that it is some type of moisture-related problem, possibly pet urine or mold. With your home being a 1925 vintage, it is likely that whatever has caused the black spots has penetrated the surface, and a plank replacement is the best way to permanently solve the problem. The wood planks that show the spots can be removed, new, unfinished planks can be installed, and the new planks can be custom stained to match the color and finish of your existing floor. A reputable wood repair and refinishing company should be able to help.
Cleaning techniques vary depending on the type of finish that is on the uppermost layer of the floor, which is called the wear layer. Knowing the type of finish is important to properly clean a wood floor.
read the entire column with information on caring for a variety of finishes
wanted: Attractive & sturdy Craftsman-style rectangular dining room table with 2 leaves - capable of seating 8 or 10 with the leaves in, 4-6 without - for under $500. Something that will stay sturdy and last at least two generations. Any suggestions?
From the episode abstract:
Based on the design motifs of the Arts and Crafts style of the 1920s, the Mission-style ottoman in this Wood Works project features strong lines, mortise-and-tenon joinery and a natural wood finish. Precisely milled wood and subtle details such as the beveled through-tenons suggest strength and fine craftsmanship.
Craftsman Furniture Projects: Timeless Designs & Trusted Techniques From Woodworking's Top Experts
My colleague Derek Martin, an experienced and very talented woodworker, recently offered to review a book I received from the kind folks at Woodworkers' Journal:
Thank you for the opportunity to read and give my brief review of Craftsman Furniture Projects
I will start out by saying that I not only enjoyed the easy reading, but I also found myself distracted by the illustrations as I thumbed my way through the book. The book is loaded with diagrams, templates and pictures. Many more visual displays are also included to show exactly what is being done which can be especially useful if it’s your first time trying a particular procedure. Finished products are also displayed to show you what you are working towards at all times. So the use of illustration in this book along with descriptive detail made it an A+ for me.
One of my favorite items was the use of old woodworking tools and the brief explanation of what their purpose was on the project. Some were tools that can still be very useful today such as the wood marking gauge used to drawl more precise lines while performing the layout of a rabbet joint on a piece of stock. Simple tools like this can be found, usually when you’re not looking for them, at garage sales and flea markets and I have developed a habit of collecting and using such items rather than their newer and cheaper counterparts.
Throughout the book you will find sections called Quick-Tips and Technical Drawings. These brief paragraphs are hints and tips that outline safety, accuracy and workarounds for each project.
This issue includes nearly twenty beautiful furniture pieces that can be constructed in any decently outfitted woodshop. I would recommend this book to any beginner who wants to try their hand at building sturdy and eye-catching furniture or any master craftsman who thinks he’s seen it all.
Each Mendota mantel - made from antique reclaimed old-growth timbers and "rescued wood" - is unique, and uniquely beautiful. The wood has been salvaged from old barns, mills and warehouses, most built from the mid 19th to early 20th century, and each piece is sculpted with hand tools. Custom carving - like this piece by Jock Holman, on a rescued beam from a Norwegian ship - is available, although much of their work simply celebrates the natural grain and shape of the wood without any additional decoration. They describe the provenance of their materials thus:
Antique Reclaimed timber mantels are recycled beams that have been salvaged from old buildings. They have an estimated age of 300 to 800+ years. They are antiques. They grew from old growth forests that flourished in America through the 1930’s - forests that are now mostly gone.
Our reclaimed timbers were milled into beams in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to become mills, factories, warehouses, and barns - buildings now being demolished.
Unlike water-salvaged timbers, our Reclaimed timbers have been air-aging for over 100 years. This slow air-drying enhances color, beauty and character.
Most importantly, air-dried timbers are more stable and much less likely to twist or check (crack). Reclaimed antique timbers are a limited resource.
Our ‘Rescued’ timber mantels are milled from present day trees that have been discarded. They are most often logs from urban tree services, storm blown trees, or ‘ends’ from logging operations.
The artisans at Mendota are comfortable working in the Craftsman / Mission Revival style, as in this piece by Dan Guion, just as much as doing much more contemporary-styled work like this backlit mantel made from heart pine reclaimed from Wabasha's Big Jo Flour Mill. Check out a gallery of their work.
Monongaehala PA cabinetmaker Pat Herforth recently channeled the spirit of Charles Rennie Mackintosh to build a new kitchen for client Carrie Russell's 1920 Tudor/Craftsman home in Morgantown, West Virginia.
Once in a great while, if you're very lucky, you're sorry to see a work day end so soon. Pat Herforth felt that way when he created a kitchen for Carrie Russell.
"I was at work eight hours, and it seemed like 15 minutes," said the Monongahela woodworker.
"I didn't sleep at night -- for excitement."
The thrill was in building cabinetry, trim, light fixtures and furniture in the style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish architect/designer whose take on Art Nouveau jelled with the European Arts & Crafts movement near the turn of the 20th century.
photograph by Darrell Sapp for the Post-Gazette
Robert Koch studied under John Kassay (author of The Book of Shaker Furniture
Robert lives and works in Diamond Springs, California (not far from my home in Sacramento), and takes commissions and may have other pieces for sale.
Take a look at this beautiful bed! The very strongly Greene & Greene inspired design is originally by Gary Rogowski, but this example - in cherry and walnut, finished with hand-rubbed oil and wax - was made by Paul DeWitt in Colorado. It sells for $2775 (king) and $2600 (queen).
Take a look at Paul's other work at his custommade gallery and on his own website.
AOL, long thought to be way behind the times, is actually making some free and useful videos for woodworkers and other do-it-yourself types. They are part of the produced content on their video service - an attempt to compete with YouTube, I guess. They've even signed up some pretty good hosts - for example, a whole suite of home-improvement videos starring Eric Stromer, who hosts the Clean Sweep program on TLC. The site also includes print versions of the instructions for each project, so that you don't need to watch the video over and over while building your table or bench or what have you.
Edmonton craftspeople Curtis Allan, a woodworker, and Ania Dymarz, an artist working with leather and glass, have come together to build some very unique and attractive pieces, with plenty of flair and a noticeable basis in the Arts & Crafts movement. Curtis and Ania regularly display and sell their work at Edmonton and other local crafts fairs and events.
Bob Bresnahan and Emily Zopf are located in Valdez NM, just outside of Taos, and together build some absolutely beautiful wood furniture strongly informed by both the American Arts & Crafts movement the more rustic look of the Mission and various related revival styles.
Bob and Emily's work is quite similar to that of many northeast woodworkers - not necessarily in style, but in that their work is part of a very rich local tradition with its own ways of working specific local woods and using specific techniques rooted in their region. But they are not stifled by historical designs, and instead seek to modernize and change traditional themes:
We like tradition. The New Mexico furniture making tradition is old and rich. The Craftsman furniture traditionis full of great ideas and is very alive today. We want to add to both traditions. Furniture needs to evolve even as it pays tribute to the great heritage of Spanish craftsmanship and the American Arts and Crafts movement.
I found a number of items on their site especially attractive. Take a look at the cherry trestle table with walnut pins and butterfy joins, the hutch with alder vine pattern, which is repeated in a number of items, like this nine-drawer dresser. Their use of unique and obviously Southwestern iron hardware and a number of carved and cut-out motifs make all their work spectacularly un-generic - all pieces are very obviously part of that New Mexico tradition, and would fit with either with a Craftsman or Mission styled home.
Saw this terrific carving on Acton Street in north Berkeley, California the other day; nobody was home. Anyone familiar with this craftsperson's work? Let me know if you think you might know who is responsible - I'd like to see more of his or her work.
The carving is not particularly deep, yet the details all really stand out - not sure if it's the light or the wood or a combination of the two, but the delicacy of the design is visible all the way from out in the street. every detail of the irises is clear, as well as the gently scalloped hex-pattern in the ground behind them.
Charles & Hudson had a good post recently on residential fencing, and it got me thinking about all the great Craftsman style fences I've seen in the last few years - since I really started paying attention to this kind of thing, at least. Here are some pictures, fencing-related tutorials, custom designers and builders, vendors and other resources related to Arts & Crafts style fences, garden gates, arbors and other related features:
Gary Katz devotes his time to trim and finish carpentry and architectural millwork. His name may be familiar as the author of Finish Carpentry and The Doorhanger's Handbook; his website has a number of articles on trim techniques, with lots of good info on mouldings, columns and other detail work.
He also has a terrific and easy-to-follow tutorial on how to build this very attractive and detailed mantelpiece, with cloud lifts and inlaid panels strongly influenced by Greene & Greene. The final result is shown above, but if you have some interest in his technique and the process of building one like it yourself, you'll have to check out the drawings and step-by-step instructions, all documented with photographs.
Sharon Letts had the opportunity to meet & speak with Arcata-based furnituremaker Whit McLeod recently, and The Eureka Reporter published her story on August 8, 2006:
Whit McLeod came to Humboldt County as many have — to attend Humboldt State University.
He graduated in 1976 with a degree in biology with an emphasis on wildlife management. Initially, he worked at Redwood Science Lab in Arcata, but soon found himself building wooden boats with the likes of boatwright David Peterson in a shop behind another wooden boat master, Ken Bates, on Gunther Island.
“I started out making boxes for bottles of wine,” McLeod laughed. “Then I made the folding chair.”
The folding chair is now as well known as the boxes the wine comes in, and is a common sight around town. Built from wine barrels, it’s a little folding chair for patio or beach use and it now makes up anywhere from 40-50 percent of sales for McLeod.
Since the chair, McLeod and his team of four — which includes his wife Kristy McLeod — have created beautiful craftsman-style furniture using the same wine barrels, as well as other types of reclaimed and salvaged wood. The furniture is made the old-fashioned way, using the mortise and tenon joint method.
the full article is available online from The Eureka Reporter
Add to the list of things I never really thought about but now, after seeing them, desire or even need: very attractive handcrafted exterior window shutters, in a wide variety of designs and many different sizes and grades of stain. See the whole range of products on Allentown, PA-based Copper Moon Woodworks' website.
The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran an article on one of my favorite furnituremakers, Berkeley Mills. Their Japan meets Craftsman style is instantly recognizeable and really enunciates many of the best features of each aesthetic. As seen in the photograph above, they do architectural millwork and cabinetry as well, not just furniture.
A good friend just completed a Craftsman-style house for his family, and he was looking for furniture that would match its authentic style. On a recommendation from the Craftsman Home in Berkeley, we headed for Berkeley Mills, one of a small handful of Craftsman-inspired furniture-makers in the United States.
When we wandered into the showroom, I did not announce that I was a Chronicle contributor, or that I was a wood butcher who'd fashioned a variety of cabinetry projects (along with dozens of houses) over the past 30 years. The guy on the floor approached us, discovered our interest, and promptly led us to a sideboard, stating in an offhand way, "This is one I built."
Rick Badgley has designed and built custom furniture and interior architecture for going on thirty years. Now working out of his own shop in Three Rivers, California (very close to Sequoia National Park, whose immense redwoods must give him some inspiration), Rick builds original and reproduction designs based on the masterworks of the Arts & Crafts movement.
One of the houses I grew up in is a 1917 wood-shingle quasi-bungalow at the base of the Berkeley Hills, near the Solano tunnel. The house was designed by James Plachek, who was responsible for the art-moderne Berkeley Library, Berkeley's Heywood Building, Epworth Hall, the Grace Congregational, and a number of other structures throughout the state, including the now-closed UC Theater (also 1917), where I worked on weekends and in the evenings after school in the late 1980s. Plachek built and remodeled a number of theaters between 1915 and 1930, including the Chimes in Oakland and the Lorin (now the Phillips Temple Church) at 3332 Adeline in Berkeley. In the mid 1930s, Plachek was focused primarily on large-scale WPA projects like the immense Moderne Alameda County Courthouse on the shore of Lake Merrit, shown here in Michele Manning's beautiful plein air pastel drawing.
Before my father bought the house, the previous owners hired woodworker and light fixture designer Kip Mesirow, who made a number of alterations and improvements to Chez Panisse (in the same building where, coincidentally, my father lived as a student at UC Berkeley, before it was a restaurant) in the 1970s, and a collaborator of printmaker and illustrator David Lance Goines' - to finish the attic and turn it into a beautiful, raw-redwood-wall master suite, a sort of mixture of rustic cathedral, nordic cabin and Japanese country house.
Mesirow's improvements to both my father's house and Chez Panisse are a bit more Rennie Mackintosh and Wright than Maybeck, embracing the austere and geometrical forms that Mackintosh loved and Wright emulated; these shapes repeat in much of the Chez Panisse style both in and out of the restaurant itself, most notably Goines' many poster and cookbook designs for the restaurant and the lettering over the restaurant's entrance. Goines even uses the Mackintosh rosette in a few of his own illustrations.
This is one version (vertical queen) of a neat Craftsman faux-armoire murphy bed made by Sonoma Woodworks in Sebastopol. Click on the image to see a larger picture and read the full product description.
Swedish-born Taimi Barty's style is spare, a sort of modernist and Asian- and Nordic-inflused Shaker. A recent desk and chair set (here's another similar desk by Barty, with interesting inlay) of hers has elements of classic Swedish design in the organic and slightly bowed legs and arms of the chair, and the flare in the legs of the desk - as well as an asymmetrical shape to the desk that is both Victorian and modern at the same time. Her Pillar of Drawers is as much sculpture as it is a well-designed use of vertical space, and items such as her deceptively simple wine rack show that her mind is as much on practicality as it is on aesthetic. She is part of the Mendocino Coast Furnituremakers guild/organization, and with woodworker Robert Sanderson, owner of Fort Bragg's Sanderson Hardware, produces furniture as Wood Joint Studio.
Taimi studied engineering at Harcard and Radcliffe, and after a few years "cleaning up petroleum hydrocarbons" in San Francisco, she began a course of study in the Fine Woodworking Program at the College of the Redwoods. She and Sanderson both studied there under the great James Krenov.
Matt Haughey's Ask Metafilter is a terrific resource - ask any question on any topic and get lots of answers, ranging from the informative to the sometimes idiotic. Today someone asked about non-toxic (or relatively less-toxic) wood staining methods, which started an excellent discussion on the subject.
The web may be the antithesis of the Craftsman ideal - chaotic, full of junk, hard to navigate, inconsistent, and hardly workmanlike - it does contain endless excellent references for woodworkers engaging in their own attempts at craftsmanship. Using the collaborative social bookmarking experiment Delicious, I've found plenty of plans and other useful resources - some for beginners and other for more advanced woodworkers - that will be helpful to people contemplating Arts & Crafts-style furniturebuilding. While there are plenty of plans for sale out there, I'm focusing here only on those that are available for free:
Bill Eichenberger is a Bay Area cabinetmaker specializing in shoji screens, fusuma, tansu and other Japanese-style interior architecture. I was particularly impressed with this guest room made almost entirely from recycled cypress - it looks like an 18th century sailing ship! He also does work in the A&C, Deco and Victorian styles.
update 09.02.07: I have been informed that a) Dana Robes furniture is no longer in business as of 09.06, and that Eric Gesler left the firm in 2002.
I wrote about Dana Robes once before, but I just wanted to point out a beautiful Craftsman rocker that is in their most recent mail-order catalog. The chair was designed by Eric Gesler, the head designer at Dana Robes (he also teaches workshops at their Enfield, New Hampshire workshop), and is comes in either cherry, ash, oak or maple. Most of their work is orthodox Shaker, but this pieces (and some of their custom built-ins) has very strong Craftsman lines, although stretched out a bit in a sort of compromise with its makers' Shaker background. The rocker sells for about $2000.
Jeffry Lohr is a woodworker and educator living and working near Valley Forge, PA. His large studio houses a regular workshop series priced at various levels for both the serious student as well as the hobbyist; J. D. offers a solid machine-based 48-hour (week long) course for beginners through much more advanced students. Other educational opportunities include two-year apprenticeships.
His own work is very strongly influenced both by Prairie and Craftsman traditions, and many of his original designs merge elements of Asian and traditional American Craftsman styles and such Prairie elements as fine spindlework and the more cubic, grid-based geometry of Frank Lloyd Wright and other furnituremakers of the Prairie style. His casework is particularly interesting, showing an interesting mix of Mackintosh's Glasgow style and the Japanese-influenced cloud lifts and soft edges popularized by Greene and Greene.
If you are near Valley Forge and are a woodworker youself, you will also find his wood gallery - and his recommendations of various area woodsellers - particularly useful.
Way up along the California coast, not far inland from Point Arena and not far from Mendocino, lies the tiny town of Boonville. Furniture designer and builder Tom McFadden – who does double duty as a woodworking instructor at Medocino Community College and cabinetmaker for Navarro Vineyards – has been living and making beautiful A & C -inspired furniture in this area since the early 1960s. The liquid lines and soft lifts of his work evoke Greene & Greene and aspects of the Nouveau movement, with a sort of pared-down simplicity. He writes that he currently works primarily in two styles: one characterized by the straight lines and square corners of the most formal Shaker work, and the second incorporating a rounded design element that he calls "steps," which echoes the Asian cloud lifts used so effectively by the Greenes. The most iconic characteristic to Tom's work, though, is his tendency to combine woods of very different colors and shades in the same work, giving some of his finest work a kind of graphic contrast not seen anywhere else. This theme is even visible in his much more conservative office furniture.
I'm not sure exactly how to classify much of the work of Meredith, NH based Sugartop Furniture; a lot of owner/proprietor Jeff McAllister's work is a sort of modern Shaker, but there are very strong elements of Asian-influenced Mission and Craftsman design present as well. Some of his work – a cherry and curly maple coffee table, a curly maple computer desk, a cherry and maple blanket chest - are recognizeably Shaker, with the clean and spare and very modern looking lines of that style. However, items such as these inlaid media shelves are much more fanciful and expressive.
And when visiting Jeff's site, make sure and read his illustrated article showing the entire tree-to-finished-furniture process.
There are a number of really fine artists and craftspeople making doors in traditional Craftsman styles right now (we've got a few photos up in the galleries of Brian Lee's excellent and very creative work at Mendocino Doors), but what stood out about Craftsmandoors.com was more their business model and application than anyhing else - the doors are nice, the glass good-looking if limited, but they have this "door quote wizard" on their site that allows you to go through a 10-12 step process of specifying everything from finish to sidelights and transom, size, drip cap, hardware and of course general design. Owners Todd and Lori Preimsberg sell only over the Internet and keep their stock in Renton, Washington.
A number of firms sell wood flooring reclaimed from a huge variety of sources - rosewood railroad ties from Thailand, southern yellow pine from catalog warehouses, Great Salt Lake railroad trestle pilings, Douglas Fir ("distressed picklewood") from pickle vats, maple from factory floors, remilled oak, chestnut, pine and other woods salvaged from old homes and barns - the list goes on and on. In addition to flooring, some companies market millwork and beams made from reclaimed wood. It's so nice to know the provenance of your floors - to walk around on that kind of history and know that there's a story behind it. Given the increasingly competetive pricing and availability of this type of wood, the shipping costs that used to rule it out for many projects are less and less an issue.
"Aunt Alice" has been working as a cabinetmaker for over 25 years, and has spent the last 10 years focusing on furniture design and manufacture. Her focus has been specifically on the Prairie aesthetic, but her interpretation of those straight, wide lines is certainly original and modern; she's integrated Asian design elements and techniques into her work as well, and the end result is recognizeably orthodox Prairie and, at the same time, very contemporary. She lives and works in San Diego county, and sells her furniture through her web site and is available for hire for other projects, such as the built-ins she has concentrated on for much of her career.
Jim Becker is just one of the many gifted cabinetmakers in the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers. Since first being introduced to the trade at a boatyard in Friendship, Maine in 1979, Becker has gone on to develop his craft by designing and building furniture that combines elements of traditional Shaker cabinetry with those of Mission and Craftsman styles. His Ming Shaker line integrates the simple plainness of Shaker design with the detail and angularity of contemporary modern woodwork. My favorite piece, though, is his Mission armoire, which can look monumental from one angle and subtly austere from another.
