Well, so far, for a refreshing change, its been a pretty busy month ... We finished what I thought at the time was a pretty big claro walnut slab table, 3 x 10, below. Turns out, its not so big. Well be able to put four of them, probably with chairs, on the table (thats just half of it above ) we are currently designing and building with Steve Holman of Holman Studios ... The first of two tables in this commission will be 26 x 9 and then we have another tiny one to build that will be only 8 x 20. Steves shop is just down the road from ours and we often collaborate on projects like this one and like this project we did last year. More on the big table later this weekend ....
Also, today, Will and Ashley are on their choice to New York City for the weekend and, while they are there, they will drop off the 10 walnut chairs in the photo above to the client who got the black Art Deco vanity a couple of weeks ago. They looked really good with the table above, but the client received their Nakashima table yesterday and Im anxious to see how they look with that. Last weekend, I went to Boston to drop off three tables to a designer I sometimes work with, Jennifer Palumbo. You can see two of them in the photo below. And then I spent the weekend visiting my sister in Rockport, just up the coast by Gloucester. While I was there, we made an afternoon of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem with the Ying Yu Tang Chinese house ... Spectacular museum with a great collection of North Boston shore Federal furniture, ship models, and other fascinating stuff.
Classic Rockport, motif #1 Roy Moores Lobsters
One of the Seymours.Also, in Boston, I visited my Brother in laws letterpress print shop, Firefly Press, (more on that later ... It was really cool) and dropped a small table/mockup Sam made at the home of the cockatoo chairs ...
Were about a day achoice from finishing the king size bed with the metal inlays we have been working on. That has been an immensely rewarding project on a number of different levels. Love the clients, Will did all the turning and carving and some of the inlay work, Sam did all the metal finishing and coloring, Trevor did a fantastic job with the CNC work on the inlays, we learned a whole lot about waterjetting, (the post just below this one) which was fascinating. As we were working on that, Jim occasionally entertained us all with his new coat.
The duck inlay parts ...
The week before last, we installed one of the two tv cabinets we made back in the fall in the This Old House project. Looks great the big one will go in the week after next.
For a 37" flat screen
Yesterday, a colleague asked me to join Linked In, which I did...any Linked In folks out there? Dont know much about it but it seemed like something I should do ....Comments? If you haveany experience with it. Kind of like Facebook for business people it seems ... Anychoice, its a really rainy Saturday.... no golf or tennis today ... Wheres that Hunter Thompson book Im reading?....More later if it keeps raining ...
one of my designer clients sent me this eero saarinen table base and asked us to make a wood top for it with a chalky flat finish. she chose quartered white oak and we all thought it was a cool form when it went out the door today ... im not sure exactly where she found the base, but they are out there somewhere, and, it appears from this link, they can be purchased at a very reasonable price sometimes. since we fixed some danish modern couches and chairs a while back, i have become re-interested in the style, which i find simple, yet practical and elegant in an understated choice. i kind of think of those danish and swedish guys as 1960s and 70s shakers, without the religion. use what you need, and as little of it as you need, to get the job done.
simple detailing
simple construction
it was originally going to be a walnut top, but that was too dark ....
we refinished it naturally with dark danish oil from watco ... perfect ...
straightforward joinery and minimalist design. badly repaired several times in the past ... we plugged 
i even bought the book, which i have enjoyed
check it out ... great stuff and some interesting design ideas there ...
believe it or not, i am still buried in a blizzard of papework. while im not complaining, and we have moved quite a few names from the in process to the deposited column, i am finding it extremely difficult to find time to write. i have a couple posts in the works and i hope to get to them soon, though i dont see it happening for the rest of this week. and then theres the holiday.. today we went to stratton for a pre-install, which is a word i made up to describe a process new to us. there has been a design change, which brings our cabinet into very close contact with an existing, rough sawn beam that has twisted and curved out of plumb since its installation years ago. that made it difficult to predict how our cabinet will look regarding the negative space between the plumb and level and straight cabinet and the twisted post. with a little molding tweaking, we will be able to fit the cabinet inside the corner of the beam and while it fades achoice from the post at the top, at least there is light all the choice and it will look fine when its all finished and installed ... until i have some time to write something coherent and informative, here are some photos of what weve been working on this month. some of these projects i hope to document more fully later ... patience, patience; its a virtue ... click the pictures to enlarge them ...
the cabinet tweaked into position today ... at first it was not so good
a photoshopped mockup of the finished cabinets ... the design change i spoke of was some new slimmer and neater stonework ...
working out the setails
and, we snuck in a custom elm table top .. looks perfect doesnt it ...
actually, it was not so good when we started. it was pretty severely cracked on the back side, which required some extensive butterfly work and some pretty extensice filling on the face side
and the ends ... they are seamless now and that technique will make a good post sometime ...
sam completed the first of three welded steel and rebar bases ... a little coloring, a little intentional rusting and hell be all set ... there is a 17 foot table that goes with this one. all will have elm slab tops and the long one has an interesting 30" x 30" brick column in the middle of it that will require some interesting joinery.
this ones for the 9 8" table
and this is the shop drawing for the 17 footer
and, were coming to the end on a 62" round pedestal table with some fancy edge inlay work, three leaves, and lots of burl ....
and a somewhat complex base below
and ... we fixed a mirror !!
it doesnt look like anything fancy, but it belonged to a clients grandmother and so, was important ..
it required some thoughtful jig work, the design of the workings of which will come in handy sometime in the future im sure.
cute when it was done ...
the claro slab on the wall is going to aspen as a coffee table with black steel legs ...
and im out of here for now ....
we trucked our new slabs to berkshire products last week to ahve them sanded. many hundreds of dollars later, we can really see what they will be like ... theyre not numbered the same as before, but you get the idea ... i think ill let them speak for themselves ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
theres a fine desk in here i think
aka, the goat faced slab 
#5 in the photos below ... not bad ...
really not bad at all ...
funky one ...
and below is the original post ...
well, this one looks like its going to be a beauty. the next time you see it, it will be more obvious, but i can tell you now that this piece of timber is pretty spectacular. its slab #2 above. true, its got some minor issues, but ooh lah lah, it looks like there is some fantastic stuff hidden in that roughness. it will make a great coffee or center table, and its available to be transformed and delivered soon to you. lots of other claro walnut ideas to consider in this recent post. click the photos below to enlarge them.
i purchased these 4 new smaller slabs from my supplier, goodhope hardwoods, while shopping for the piece above that i purchased for a new client in new york city. its going to be a 10 foot dining table. its hard to see here, but its covered in curly figure from one end to the other .. i hope to start working it up later this week.
crazy !!
i also purchased these three medium sized slabs and it looks like number 3 or #1 will make a really nice desk. a few years back, we made this mango wood desk, and ever since, ive been meaning to do another along those lines as a spec piece. im working with the director of exhibitions at the guilford, vermont welcome center on route 91 and hope to show some pieces there this summer. nothing like a claro walnut desk to grab some eyeballs.
i just realized i forgot to photograph slab #2, but ill get on that tomorrow.
and ive still got this last piece from the previous set. it is literally in two pieces, cracked from end to end, but is hanging on the wall with steel tube stiffeners for now ... i can see a nice curved, end to end set of butterflies, big to small to big again, reconnecting the two pieces into one fine dining table. its about 45 x 90 x 1.375 thick. great figure hiding in there too. its the next one in the log from the one below .. nice ..
in case you are wondering if i robbed a bank to buy this wood, theres an explanation having to do with our recent show at the southern vermont arts center. we had, as ed sullivan used to say, "a really good show" ... it comes down this tuesday.
