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 ...

labor day

 

 it's hard to believe it's labor day, historically thought of as 'the end of summer'.  the calendar says we have three more weeks, and i like to think of summer going until the golf courses close and paddle tennis season starts.  so, in my head i at least, have 6 more weeks of summer.  the weather has been sooo spectacular here the lately, that i've been distracted from my writing.  taking a break i guess.  there has still been a lot going on though.  we picked up the desk above from the local arts center where i had loaned it to them last year for their receptionist, hoping to sell it.  we realized that it needed to be 'on its own' in one of the galleries, so we brought it back to the shop to refresh it ... good as new now, and still available.  see the link above or the 'stuff for sale' link in the 'pages' section off to the right there ..

below are a few of the things that have been happening the last couple of weeks.

we finished a base for a 60" round coffee table.  the design was by a new york interior designer and the top was fabricated by our friends at kb woodworking in cairo, new york .. they are the go to folks for fancy veneer work of all kinds ...

our part was pretty simple and involved a curved form and a little joinery .. we shipped it to the designer's finisher for bleaching and it will eventually end up on the east end of long island ..

and we finished up a collection of pieces for a house that will be finished shortly.  we'll be delivering them all on the 11th ... above is a new version of a sideboard we first made back in 2009.  a little different arrangement of the dimensions, and the mirrors and so forth, but essentially, the same piece.

and sam made some funky custom door pulls for a local builder's new frig.  it was a collaborative design, and they came out pretty cool .. the door panels were made from a tag sale bed headboard.  pretty creative project all around.

and trevor and i visited a project we did back in 2009, a house in grafton where we did a lot of work.  after five years, there were some rope lights that needed replacing, and the client was concerned that the weight of the center speaker (very heavy) on the ends of the cantilevered shelf support had bent the shelf.  we'll be making a new version with a thicker top piece and hopefully, we can slide the old one out and the new one in without messing with the wiring, which was pretty complicated, to say the least.

on the way back, we visited another project to check templates for an upcoming railing project that sam will be starting before long .. the rolling door and stools below are also part of that one ..

reclaimed chestnut ... installation check in the upstairs of the metal shop ..

four more of these stools

and the rest of the new house project .. a claro walnut slab coffee table

a dining table and six chairs

and the two swiveling lounge chairs from this blog post

 

chris is working on another pop up tv cabinet .. more on that as it comes together later this week .. 

and we had our first wedding among the 13 cousins ... that would be lizzie, in the white in the middle, sitting on the porch of her new house ... true to the family spirit, they are building it themselves, in their spare time, and for the party, the living room was stacked floor to ceiling with the flooring.