Off To The Marble Mill

Our client for the black vanity sent us the specs for the sink she had chosen and in looking it over, I noticed the highlighted sentence below ... After talking it over with my marble cutter, Johnson Marble, in Proctor, Vermont, we decided it would be safest if we got the actual sink and faucet since the top was going to New York City ... We have time to do it right, but not time to do it twice .... Click the pictures to enlarge them ... We started by cutting a section out of the cardboard so we could trace the inside outline of the sink bowl.
Cut some holes for the faucets ... Interestingly, the pipe for the faucet was not in the center of the fixture and was a different size .... glad we checked
looking from underneath
Set it up right side up and then we had our finished template ...
Off to the marble mill, a fantastic old facility adjacent to the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor.
Coming in the front door .. Its a great old industrial space ....
Looking back the other choice from the far end...
Showing the honed finish
A rough slab of Danby Montclair, with nice black/brown markings ...
showing the layout .... I forgot to take a photo of the building from outside, but its very cool the choice it relates to the rest of the site ...

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hold on to my hat

well, ok, out of control here. not really, but looking at the pictures below, you might think we were ... there is just so much stuff going on, all at the same time, all different styles and directions, but all cool. above and below are two new belt buckles from sam in the metal shop. the top one was for one of our guides on our montana trip (fish in montana), and the one below was for a local bass tournament that ended recently ... the rest of the stuff below is just a short summary of last week and the rest of the month coming up... click the photos to enlarge them.
and in the woodshop ... we finished and delivered the dining room this past week; it all looks good and everyones happy, including me ... its alchoices nice to wrap up a big one ...
it was hard to get it all in the picture, but the light in their room is fantastic in the late afternoon ...
arm chairs .... very sculptural process getting those arms on there ..and the clients threw an eastlake armchair restoration at us at the last minute ... we were all surprised how much we liked it when it was finished ... it had been in the clients basement since they moved in and it was pretty questionable looking when we picked it up.
and, a friends mom died ... she was a client of mine too and so we made the box for her ashes, which i alchoices consider an honor. we have made a bunch of these and i went back and read one of my blog posts about the process ... glad to do it ... the service was last saturday ...
and here we have a claro walnut slab desk thats happening now too ... here it is, as of friday afternoon, with the drawer framing just starting ...
here it is on its feet today. will was doing some banjo work this afternoon and we decided to put the first coat of finish on the top ... more on that piece as we progress ...
and were watching our friend steve holman make progress on a challenging piece that trevor did some fancy cnc work on. essentially, trevors job was to take the concept of the small handmade model above and convert it to full size. without trevor, it would have been a daunting task of freehand, large scale drawing. changes and adjustments would have been painful ...
trevor first converted the plan view that steve gave him at 1" = 1, to digital form, and then made the 1/4 scale model you see in mdf above. from there he made many small and subtle adjustments before making plan view templates of the shapes to test the full size fit ups. he then cut the curved plates and forms for steve to build the walls and laminate the applied curved and veneers walls on .
note the allowances for varying wall thicknesses, handicap, wheel chair access, etc.,etc ..
full size plates and shoes here
and friday, we saw some of the full size walls ... its going to be a cool object ...
and then there are the troublesome bobbin leg tables for an interior designer in northern vermont ... looked easy on paper, yet will warned me it wouldnt be, and, he was very right ... we finally figured we had to make four forms to glue up the 3 piece mid rails or else we would have too many pieces to deal with at once ...
got it now ... were going to reduce the space between the top two rails to get the joinery and proportions to be better and then all we have to do is make another one, just like it to match ... seems like they are taking forever ... win some/lose some ...
and then theres the bar cabinet that will is building ... its loosely a simpler version of the art deco macassar ebony cabinet he built a few years ago. hes on the home stretch now ...
the doors, with their curly maple center inlays, went into the bag friday afternoon .. saw them this morning and they looked good.
and then theres that $5000. load of wood that arrived from irion lumber last week. 4 dining tables, a coffee table, a corner cupboard and 8 chairs, and some other odds and ends, coming right up ...
the table and corner cupboard cad drawings ... the client chose the slightly larger version on the left after we sent her a cardboard full size plan view ...
and theres the cherry trestle table from this post ... coming up soon
and this morning, in our drivechoice, was sams new/old 700 pound clausing milling machine that he picked up yesterday from plaza machinery in bristol, vermont ... all we had to do was figure out how to get it out of the truck, into the shop and then off the dolly ... in the end, all it takes is the proper equipment
and a competent support/cheerleading staff, including uncle pete and his tractor, jennifer and kit.
getting it off the 6" high dolly and onto the floor was a trick involving about 8 layers of mdf blocks on each corner, removed one at a time ... it felt like we were building the pyramids, in reverse ... lever up, remove, lever down ... got it ...
and there was still time to help kit plant the garlic ... indian summer here this week ... beautiful.

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10/15
update from my friend jeff branch has fixed the problem !! gold star for jeff ! heres the recipe if you have a blog of your own:

"The lightbox feature is back, but Blogger has added a setting to disable it. From your dashboard go to Settings, then under Settings, find Formatting and there is an option: Open Images in Lightbox, where you can select no. This worked for me.

Jeff"
worked for me too ... what a relief ... thanks again jeff
10/14
theyre baaaaaaaack !!!!! aaaaahhhhhhh !!!!! the slideshows are back ..and i STILL hate them !!!!!
9/25 .. update
well now i have to take back my rant on google below. miraculously, my blog is now back and working how it used to work. click the photo; it gets bigger, like alchoices. unless will did something that i dont know about, i give google a gold star for hearing bloggers complaints.
9/18
well, the folks at blogger seem to think they know how i want the photos to be displayed on my blog. after 4 years with them, they have now decided that everyone wants to see facebook slide shows when they click on an image ... that feature disconnects the photos from my text and effectively pretty much ruins the continuity of a post. it also, at least at my house, now takes every blog post longer to load. my apologies. this new format is not my choice and unless they change it or unless will can figure out how to work around it, ill most likely be looking to move to wordpress or some other platform. in the meantime, thanks for your loyalty, comments and support ... well see what happens...
best,
dan mosheim
dorset custom furniture
ps ... after a little reflection, the lightbox thing kind of works but you have to wait for all the pictures from each post to load (which may or may not be a problem, depending on the speed of your connection,) before you see them. to exit the slide show, just click anywhere outside the box, which will return you to the post.

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Mysterious Greene Greene Like Houses

I belong to a Yahoo newsgroup on Greene & Greene design, architecture and furniture. I have alchoices enjoyed the style of the Greene brothers, and, while not a strict copier, I have often been influenced by their design vocabulary. when working with clients with a fondness for Arts & Crafts style furniture. So, in 2003, while preparing to make a couple of rooms of furniture for one of my local clients, I took a trip to Pasadena to tour the Gamble House, the Huntington Museum, meet with John Hamm about lighting and visit a friend in Huntington Beach ... Good trip.
On my choice to the airport, I ran into a friend and told him about my upcoming trip. He told me his sister-in-law, or someone related to him, lived in a G&G house and gave me her number .. I called her when I got to town and she agreed to let me visit her and her house ... Cool neighborhood ... I dont know if her house is a documented G&G but it sure had some similarities ... The whole neighborhood had a consistent Arts and Crafts feel. As I recall, she had some original plans and I glanced at them, but dont remember the details ... Click the photos to enlarge them and leave a comment if you know anything about the houses or the neighborhood ... Thanks ....
My memory is a little sketchy and I didnt take notes, but I think this is the front door of the sister-in-law? Since she met me when I pulled up, I didnt take a lot of photos of the outside of the house ... I think hers was the 2nd or third on the left.
Her front door from the inside ...
She took me to meet her neighbor down the street at #309 ... He was also friendly and gave me a tour of his house ... I dont have a photo, but he had a definite G&G like stairchoice and I also recall some stained glass transom lights ...
The neighbors front porch ...
Below I have posted photos of (I think) Charless studio around the corner from the Gamble House .... I would love to know a little about that and what it looked like inside ... Thanks ...

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Dan Goes To the Museum

I was in Boston visiting my ailing sister a couple of weekends ago, had an hour or so to kill, and wandered into the the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for the Egyptian show of items from Tomb 10 A, a fantastic collection of Egptianana if ever Ive seen one ... The younger son Will often brought home The Treasure of King Tut from the elementary school library so my interest in that subject goes waaaay back ... I had not been to the BMFA since we took the kids oh maybe 15 years ago and I was due for a refresher .. Museums are amazing places ... full of ideas and information, things you dont see anywhere else. They can really recharge your creative spirit .... This was a good visit. Click the pictures to enlarge them ...
Just like my front steps
I started with the music room across from the coat check ... loved the abalone and ebony triangles ...
They had a couple of really fine banjos, and this was a particularly spectacular peg head
Next stop an exhibit on art and music .. There were some pretty good things to see here. Click them and you can read the signs yourself ...
All the pages of Beethovens Seventh, sort of transparent and on top of each other on the left, a Wagner opera, same deal, on the right ... about 30" x 60" each .....great concept ...
A John Cage graphic
A couple of great early Dylan photos
A wall of portraits by Herb Ritts .. Little Richard, Bowie, Springsteen,Courtney Love, Tina Turner...great photography ..
But this ... you had to be there for this ... 30 people do synchronized Madonna singing and dancing .. hypnotic .. read the blurb below and imagine youre one of them ...
This was a nice exercise in color and music ...
All in all ... it makes you think .... Tomb 10 A coming up next ...

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