wha's up?

well, it's fall ... and after almost seven years of blogging and about 700 posts, i think i may be running out of steam a bit ... my last post was about 3 weeks ago. it is fall though and the outdoor activities/distractions are daunting .. i was talking with sam yesterday, and i realized one could theoretically do some fly fishing in the morning, have lunch, play nine holes of golf.  then hit a couple apple orchard covers for some grouse or woodcock in the late afternoon, play some paddle tennis around 5:00, then have a shower and dinner, and still have time for some pottery before bedtime.  so many options; so little time. 
this post will be just a bunch of pictures and short descriptions to summarize our recent activities .. not much detail needed .. click the photos to enlarge them.

the two photos above are a revisit to the hill farm project with some more work .. we reworked the funky pedestal thing above into a bar table ..

fixed bob marley's lion chair and took it to be upholstered .. very cool chair with a 'made in italy' sticker .. appeared to be from the 50's

and we inlaid some mother of pearl poker chips into a table top.  will had to engrave a couple of them below

and we've got a new slab headboard bed going ..

another one, just like the other one ..

big and heavy, but very interesting ..

       

and i took a little trip to see emmy lou and bela fleck and abigail washburn at 'fresh grass'

it took place at mass moca ( mass. museum of contemporary arts), down the road in adams mass. an awesome musuem and worth the trip just to see the buildings. 

       

courtyard d

and a great concert venue.  for emmy lou in joe's field, i was able to stroll my way up to pretty close ..

and trevor just finished a custom walnut king bed

lots of xs  .. luckily we have done a million of em

 

 

all in.  all done

more on the fall light later  .. it particularly lights up the figured cherry on our bedroom bureau at this time of the year

pretty tough to photograph though ..

and kit has gotten the harvest in

and back in the shop, we've got another lutyens style desk going ..

this one's bigger though .. 28 x 72 .. gonna be a beauty .. lots of burl

and chris is off to australia and new zealand for three weeks on saturday ..

sam made the gates below for the side door of a local restaurant and we had to make a sign to keep the customers from using them

and sam made some funky parts for a friend's gasifier furnace

some old will mosheim wood burnings surfaced in the office .. probably from about 1990 .. love the tiger ..

the pop up tv cabinet is waiting for a decision on the finish ..

and we made a new mahogany top for an antique table pedestal

amd more news from the metal shop with this custom wood rack and adjustable grill for a peter moore fireplace up on the mountain

and i think we might have had our last outdoor shower for the season.  with temps in the 40's in the morning and 30's soon, i'm going to have to shut it off and drain the lines soon. along with taking down the screen doors, just another fall chore.

i'm going to miss the view

and speaking of views, about this time of year, for a couple days we get the reflection of the rising sun off the metal roof of the gondola shed at the top of stratton mountain about 25 miles to the southeast.  it's another one of those seasonal markers .. all for now ..

a claro walnut desk for sale

we made this desk a while back for a show at a gallery in massachusetts.  it stayed in the gallery after the show closed until the gallery was flooded by a broken sprinkler pipe.  the desk survived, but the gallery didn't, and we moved it to the local arts center where it has been on display for sale until recently.

 while it was there it acquired a pretty substantial scratch in the top of it and we picked it up a couple weeks ago to refinish it.  it's ready to go again now and looks good as new.  i thought i'd post it here for sale for a while before i return it to the gallery.

it's got a drawer and a secret compartment, and it could also work well as a small dining table for 4 or 6.  the dimensions are +/- 44 x 66 x 29.5 high, the base is steel with a natural satin finish.  the walnut top is one piece and the grain is really nice.  lots of figure and curl ... the price is $8500.  please call me at 802-867-5541, or email me at dan@dorsetcustomfurniture.com for more information.

and if that one doesn't work for you, but you like claro walnut, i have two other possibilities:

this dining table is about 36 x 90.  it's in a gallery in chicago, but i would be happy to retrieve it for you, polish it up, and ship it out.  please call or email for a price on that one.  it has a dark bronze shaker style base, and nice grain in the top.

and this slab is available.  dimensions in the photo below.  it's finished and hanging on the wall, ready to be something ... coffee table?  desk?  a dining table?  a headboard?  your choice ..

call or email with your ideas ... 

all for now ...

in the time before blogging

i was recently looking for photos of a walk i had taken with friends to a waterfall, virtually in my backyard, when i stumbled across a folder of pictures from 'the good old days', in our case 2002 to 2006, back 'in the time before blogging' you might say.  so, why not just share them to my picasa albums, and continue to add images to that folder as i go back through the archives ... my 'real' photographer retired in 2001 or 2002, and  i was just figuring out the digital thing.  so, some of the images from those days are better than others, but some are actually quite up to snuff.  i'll post a few below, just so you get an idea of what we were up to back then (more of the same, but different styles) but you can view the real folder with about 80 photos at the link below ...

some images from 2003, 2004 and 2005    click on that first one and scroll through them with the arrow keys ... if you have a good connection, you can whip right through them ...   enjoy!

 a cherry and curly maple corner cupboard ...  it had a tv in it actually ..

 

a close up of the inlay in the side table above

 a custom audio/video cabinet

 a small mahogany console

 a mahogany porch table and some aluminum chairs

  a walnut partners desk

 a 14', one piece of bubinga table and chairs

and a sideboard made from the cut off

more images at the link above ...below, the waterfall pictures

some claro walnut furniture

we delivered a project we've been working on for a while on thursday .. new house .. looking sharp, and we were glad to participate in furnishing it ..
above, we did the table, chairs and sideboard ...
click the photos to enlarge them ... 

and here we made the coffee table and the two swiveling lounge chairs i wrote about earlier ..

the tables were made from the sister slab of a long dining table we made last year .. like the previous clients, these folks liked the cracks and we left them butterflied on the bottom and sanded, 

but unfilled on the top.  it's a very natural look ...

chris made the sideboard and he did a great job!  we have made other versions of this piece, so while it's a fussy one, we pretty much had it figured out ..

the california pizzeria

ok, we recently received some photos from the pizzeria in california .. they are up and 

running, and the owners 'love their stuff'.  looks pretty good to us too .. 

here's the hostess stand with some polished rebar elements...
click the photos to enlarge them ..

and the pizza assembly table with the peel in the 'ready' position ..

and the particularly 'heavy duty' side table with 1" rebar .. that baby could support a thousand plates ...

and some 'in process' photos, before the marble, which was fabricated here in vermont by herb johnson at johnson marble and granite in proctor and shipped with the pieces to california.

what i'm reading now

a wonderful report on what it takes to get really good at something ..

and after visiting the david smith show at the new clark art museum back in july, i hauled out my doorstop of a book from the guggenheim show and spent some time with that .. the guy was a dedicated, persistent, visionary artist of his time. 

well, this was an ambitious project ... the four rabbit books by john updike. rabbit run, rabbit redux, rabbit is rich, rabbit at rest.  i was born in pottstown, pa, about 20 miles from where these books fictionally take place ... while rabbit is certainly not the most likeable man, this is a portrait of those times, and, an insightful one in my opinion. updike is such a craftsmen with words, it was hard to take a break ... 1679 pages, and i read em all, one after the other.  took about a month .. his writing on golf too, always brings a chuckle .. and there is a link to a great new yorker story in that post too.

how's that for a sentence?

and rothko ... a controversial guy, but i am influenced in my pottery by his work with color.

a comment on the history of craft, a history of how knowledge is passed down and along in society .. a bit of a slog, but you can just nip at it from time to time and revisit it as you feel like it ..

and lastly, a great read and an incredible true story ... background on the effects of the depression in seattle, the dust bowl, the nazis and the 1936 olympics, the grand coulee dam ... again, what it takes to get good at something, physically, and mentally ...