a few of our favorite things

for many reasons, things come and go from the 'popular posts' list over there to the right.  there are some posts though that i call on over and over when talking with potential clients.  and some of these posts, for whatever reason, are popular with me, but have never made the list.  'the duck bed' shown above and below was a collaboration between one of our favorite clients, our younger son will on the turning, carving and finishing and the older son sam on the metal 'carving' and patinas. 

i got to do the cad drawing and lead the design parade.  there are four posts total in the construction description, but you can access all of them from the link above.  carving spirals, cnc work on the inlays, waterjetting the actual metal parts and patinas are all covered there.

this one's got it all .. three posts total, from adapting an existing design below to a new space, cross country contractor and architect communication, custom steel railings, secret compartments, shipping details to palo alto, on and on .. lots of headscratching ... much fun.

and this 1989 project is the original staircase we built for local clients that the palo alto folks found on my website.  we recently added the railing so there is a blog post about it at this link.  a version of this project was posted on facabook by a radio station in mississippi and it has been shared i see 567,855 times .. go figure

a greene and greene style sideboard .. drawings, construction details, fabricating the hinges and the pulls, the works ... many more photos here.

ahhh, the trout desk, dovetailing 28" wide walnut planks, 'houndstooth' dovetails, and more, and below,

the 'bridges bench'  both are part of our bethlehem steel series combining the efforts of sam, will and i to create collaborative pieces in wood and steel ... 

more pieces in this series at this link

and another example of the bench above for a local museum garden

another member of the bethlehem steel series by dan, sam and will

lots more stuff here along with thoughts on interior design and custom furniture

and then we've got our on line slide shows at this link  six years of work with albums on claro walnut tables, furniture from reclaimed lumber, stuff you can do with a cnc router, some of my digitized sketchbooks with sketch and finished piece ... thousands of photos there ..

the 11 foot copper top table

loads of fun .. new processes

pool tables ... always a pleasure .. i think we are working on number 17 right now

five easy pieces  .. in addition to this fun zebra wood dining table, there are four others in wenge, hickory and steel.  one of my first ever substantial blog posts.

more photos here

as always, you can consult the 'categories' section for specific interests and the 'popular posts' section for other things that m ight catch your eye ... happy reading.  comment with your questions and i'll try to get back to you shortly ..
 also, there are slide shows available at this link that contain literally thousands of photos of our work ..
enjoy!!

still famous after all these years

well, thanks to our old friends at certainly wood, a piece we made, oh, more than 25 years ago, has gained a new life.  we were spring cleaning today and were about to recylce this brochure that came with our latest order and some one said "wait! .. check it out first.  you may want to hold onto that."  so i checked it out.  and i held onto it.  and i took a couple pictures ... click the photos to enlarge them...

with a little help on the veneer work from kb woodworking, we made this federal style sideboard in the late 80's, and with my enthusiastic permission, certainly wood used it in their promotions for a few years after that.  i have to be honest, i don't pay much attention to the promotional stuff that comes with my orders from suppliers i often use, but maybe in the future i will .. it put a nice highlight on my day.

just a few of our easily accessible photos of other certainly wood veneer projects

curly maple, lacewood, certainly wood curly redwood veneer .. i have just a little of this veneer left

see it here

 curly redwood, pre-embargo brazilian rosewood, and birdseye maple.  hammered copper pulls and hammered copper covered tapered turned legs ... one of my personal favorites ..

veneer panels laid up by our friends at kb woodworking in cairo, new york

see it here

 companion piece to the high boy above .. 

curly redwood veneer and curly maple solids, east indian rosewood

surprisingly, i don't see this on my website

a pair of federal card tables circa 1997.  crotch mahogany, ribbon stripe mahogany, and satin wood veneers ... quite the project ... another one of our favorites ...

see them here

and here

and many, many others.  it's been a long and fruitful relationship .. you go, certainly wood!!

you may use any of my photos you like, anytime ...

arts and crafts stools

we just finished building three of our arts and crafts, frank lloyd wright inspired bar stools for a client in st. louis.  they will be sprayed with a clear lacquer finish this week, and they will pop a little more once the finish is on them.  they are part of a continuation of a design we first built in 2003 for the client who gave us the inspirational photo of a similar short chair 

designed originally by frank lloyd wright.

the ones above are in natural cherry.  the ones we just finished are natural finished 

curly hard maple with leather from universal leather in high point, north carolina

 

all finished now

stragihtforward lines, with a few curves thrown in to soften
mr. wright's rectinlinearality ... (is that a word?

 we have them in our own kitchen

and we have also done them in other colors and woods

as well as patchwork scrap leather seats

 for more information and pricing, visit our dorset custom furniture website

sometimes we copy stuff

occasionally, we are asked to copy existing pieces, often, as in this case, because the original maker is no longer in business, or in the case of antiques, no longer living.  those are basically our two criteria.  we often get inquiries asking "if we can make this" and you can usually google "this" by its title or description and find out if the maker is living and still in business.  no luck on these.  and they looked pretty old.  and they were really comfortable ... the first project was a bench, below, that we made from the original in 2011.

 the original bench came to our shop, and much to our delight, the entire structure was held together with stainless steel threaded rods, clever brass 't' nuts and elegant hand made brass cyclinder nuts.  so, we had patterns for the legs, with mortises and tenons to copy it.

lots of pieces and some fussy interlocking stuff, but we eventually got it together.  finished nicely with some brush on, soak in, wipe off penofin 'nantucket mist' ... so actually, when the chairs gave up the ghost this year, we still had the original bench disassembled and piled behind the chop saw 'waiting to be fixed' for the employee lounge .. after 4 years we still hadn't gotten around to that.

 

 you can see the original bench patterns in the dark wood in the pile of parts above.

 i thought these would go relatively quickly, but when you've got 88 pieces of wood with intersections and other miscellaneous joinery, and some threaded rods and t nuts to deal with, nothing is ever going to go as quickly as you might think.

but in the end, they are graceful and sturdy, and i'm sure will be around for a long time. i look forward to seeing them in the client's garden once the snow melts in boston ...

another round walnut table .. new pedestal design

one of our new clients came up with a concept for a variation on one of our tables that was really clever.

click the photos to enlarge them ...

she asked if we could make this table we made in 2013 open to have 4' of leaves inserted. 

it seemed like it could work, so we made a model, which she accepted and we were off to new design land.

 

 all finished now, but these dark tables are tough to photograph

 with 2 of the three leaves

lots of pieces

cad drawing showing placemats and seating when open and closed

some fine walnut from irion lumber

since we had made the model on the cnc from the cad drawing, it was a simple matter for trevor to cut some full size templates for the base pieces from mdf and lay them out on the 12/4 stock

joinery details

 glue up

the finished pedestals

the rest, as they say, was just an exercise .. cut the halves, cut the apron pieces, install the holes and pins and catches ... using our trusty jig

more info on this at the blog link above

tah dah

disassembly, and final sanding .. stain and finish next week sometime