Yowza! ... What am I reading now ??? Hmmm ... Im all over the map these days. Click the pictures to enlarge them ... Upper left corner is David Mathiass excellent new book on Greene & Greene furniture ... Im kind of picking my choice through it, savoring it a couple pages at a time, admiring his detailed photos and written observations on both the Greenes and the talented makers of their designs, the Hall brothers. Without the brothers talents, the Greene brotherss furniture would, in my humble opinion, have looked assuredly different.To the right there, a classic from my design library that I visit over and over and encourage my guys to consider from time to time ... It was written by David Pye, I believe in the 70s and has been a sort of guide for me over the years. Its all about the mark of the hand and how a design without that mark is different from one with it ... Keeps us all from obsessing too much, and helps to eliminate the danger of a perfectly executed (dead) object. Its many other things too ... design + art, seeing beauty, seeing in general ... its all there ... try it, youll like it ...
ahh Carl Haiisen ... this one had characters from The Ocean Reef Club, a place on Key Largo where I lived for the winter of 1970...classic light, humorous entertainment ... suspend disbelief, laugh ... Classic Carl ... See here too ...
The New Yorker article on the new surge in uranium mines. A psychological mystery about people who actually want to have uranium mines in their towns even though some of their relatives died early and horrible deaths from the last round of it .. go figure...
And then a serious article in Rolling Stone on glacial melting ... absolutely frightening ... ditto with BP and bankruptcy ... These folks are digging pretty deep and doing some excellent writing about it ... Im a returning RS subscriber who lapsed when Hunter Thompson died a few years back ... Now I remember .... They are good.And, Islands in the Stream, a Hemingchoice classic I missed somehow. Some of the finest writing on deep sea fishing, family, friends, war .... the big picture ... For the first time, I got a serious linear connection between Hemingchoice and another of my favorite storytellers, Cormac McCarthy ... A fine piece of writing that stirred some deep thoughts on the creative process. Phew! Those folks drank a lot though ...
And lastly .. one of my clients sent me this one ... Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. Crawford is an educated man with several advanced degrees who has gone from working in a think tank (knowledge work), to working with his hands as a motorcycle mechanic and electrician. He compares knowledge work with manual work and makes the point that the manual kind has been somewhat demeaned in todays hierarchy of education goals. He discusses the kind of diagnostic thinking and brain action that come with working and learning with your hands ... Hes preaching to the choir here, and it was a bit of a heavy sled, but I stuck with it. Hes got a point. I find my work as a designer/craftsman/builder/maker/customer relations person totally and completely engaging. I didnt need to read the book to know that, but its nice to have it pointed out to me and my employees by an obviously very smart person, that we are indeed on the road to intellectual fulfillment if not that big pile of dollars in the sky. I cant imagine myself behind a desk full time, or in a situation where, at the end of the week, I couldnt point to some concrete evidence of the effort I had put in for that week ... Its Friday; it was a good week; we worked on a ton of different stuff and I feel really good about all of it.This is one in a series of post I have written on this subject. For others, heres a link ... and here, another ... Get out of the shop from time to time ... read a little
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 ....
this one and the one below are similar in design with figured cherry panels and quartersawn cherry edge details. one with an edge inlay, one without. one with black details; one all cherry and one with curly maple details and crotch mahogany veneers. same drawing, different results .. take and object; do something to it; do something else to it. 
and heres a stylish one that accompanied a table with similar design ... we worked the details over carefully with the client and while we we stuck for a label, included it in the realm of art deco though it is strictly diane and dan deco. an extremely fun project from the early 90s.
