Some house furniture
(I’m working on some posts about the table I’m building. I did one on mortising a couple of days ago, next one is on turning the legs. Then tenons and drawboring. The paid subscriptions get the whole lowdown. Meanwhile, here’s a post open to all - just a look at some of the furniture in the house.)
I recently got the “workbook” from Lost Art Press - the one with pithy quotes at the bottoms of the pages. Glad to see they worked Bill Coperthwaite in there, with his notion about people “intoxicated with the joy of making things.” Among the others was one from David Esterly’s book about his carving career: “I don’t own any of my carvings…if you walk through my house you won’t guess my profession...” - I had read and enjoyed his book but forgot about that quote. It does not apply here, to me. Just the opposite.
I always wonder about people who make stuff but don’t live with their creations. It seems odd to me, I’ve always had some of my stuff around. I don’t want to be like Thoreau and his books - at one point his unsold books came back to him, over 700 of them - leaving him to comment: “I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes, over 700 of which I wrote myself.” I fall between Esterly and Thoreau - my house is brimming with stuff I made, but it’s a small house. 4 1/2 rooms. I’ve lost track of how many pieces of my furniture are here, but it’s a lot. Maybe 3 dozen pieces. Hmm. I just made a rough tally. It’s more.
But still a fraction of what I’ve made in the past 45 years. And there’s still stuff I’d like to make for here - just no room to put it now. A couple of these pieces made it into my book Joiner’s Work - here’s an alternate view of my 2nd joined chest, made about 1992. When we open it to change out our seasonal clothing, the cats don’t waste a minute.
There’s another smaller joined chest in the same room - but photographed when I put the lid on it in the shop. We call this the “yarn chest.” You can figure out why. (top of the post) I made it as part of a show I did with Roy Underhill - we had most of the parts for 2 chests this size when we shot the two episodes on making a joined chest. The first one I finished and sold and this one sat here a long time after, unfinished. And when it was finally done, we decided to keep it, so here it stays.
Other things were intentionally made for here - either as presents for my wife like this cabinet. It was one of about 7 copies I made with my blacksmith friend Mark Atchison in 2000/2001. The original sold for scads of money back then and is now at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts - not far from where it was made.
Our copy of that cabinet now sits on top of my version of a Boston-style chest of drawers. This was the longest-interrupted piece I ever made. The upper case I made 10 years before finishing the lower case and bringing it into the house.
When I started it, I was studying Boston furniture with Trent, research for our 2010 article. In my spare time (my kids were 4 years old then...so not much spare time) I started cutting and joining stuff for one of these 2-part chests of drawers in cedrela, oak and pine. And rosewood. I didn’t get far, a couple of years went by - then I quit my job, had no shop for two years. Most everything went into storage. Then my friend Pret & I spent a year-plus building my present shop. And on & on. But finally a few years ago now I took the time to finish it off and it became Maureen’s chest of drawers - but I have one end of the deep drawer for a couple of sweaters.
One or two things are a bit outside my usual sphere. After my trip to Sweden in 2016 I was all excited about boxes with sliding lids, drawers, etc. Here’s one in Alaska yellow cedar - I hope to make more stuff like this at some point - it’s just hard to find the time.
Book cases - I know nothing about making them. I do them pretty much one way - through mortise and tenons top and bottom - and shelves in dados in between. This one I made in oak, and had that huge blank piece of oak staring me in the face. Couldn’t have that, so superimposed a Connecticut carving design on it.
And the chairs. And joined stools. One chair that’s getting a lot of use in the past two years is this German/Alpine/board-chair/brettstuhl - I’ve made maybe 4 or 5 of them. I’m going to make one next month in walnut and hickory.
We aren’t the only ones who use it.
All impressive stuff. That’s a large number of dovetails in the Swedish box
nice tour