the spaces we make

we make furniture, one piece at a time, it's true, but, we also sometime make spaces, often intimate and personal spaces, that can have a deep meaning for us and for the clients we work with.  i visited the space in the photo above yesterday, to discuss some new work in an upstairs office, and was struck by the peacefulness and beauty of it.  the client was the designer and she has an impeccable eye.  we applaud her taste in custom furniture.  the two pieces we made in the photo, the large kas tv cabinet in the background, (back when big tvs were still big), and the custom pool table in the foreground, both look great over 10 years later.  both were challenges on a lot of levels, but looking at them now i remember the challenges as both fun and considerable.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

this piece was for another special client who was, to say the least, a collector.  he pointed me to set of random shelves with items arranged lineally and told us to, as i recall'  'make them make sense'.  the individual shelves are lit, the objects are all in original finishes, and while almost all were antiques, there were some most arresting, contemporary, maria martinez pieces in the mix.  the duck decoys are all 'top shelf' and represent just a tiny part of his 100 plus piece collection displayed throughout other areas of the house.  it was also my first experience of seeing diebenkorns, milton averys, stuart davises, and georgia o'keefe paintings in a private home.

and in preparation for a recovery from a hip transplant, we created this round and tapered tv stand in a corner of the bedroom.  this was one of the first flat screen tvs i had ever seen and he encouraged me to stretch a little outside the box on the design.

 

the next four images, including the greene and greene style desk and chair above, are for a husband and wife who are long time (25 years) clients, and for whom we have done many, many pieces.  there's generally a discussion or two, a sketch or two, and then a negotiation or two, and than we do it .. in the end, the pieces always seem to feel just right for their spaces.

table and chairs, 1987 

coffee table, 1989 ... the challenge here was to not obscure the amazing carpet.  i saw it this holiday season and the rug is as vibrant and arresting as ever.  we took our main design cue from the 'ram's head' detail in the carpet design ..

 

loyal readers have seen this one before, but it's from the same house as the three photos above.

in this kitchen we took our cue for the stools from the verticals on the island face, using a frank lloyd wright inspired stool design and a cherry counter top with a walnut and curly maple stripe down the center.

and in the next room, we built an entire greene and green inspired dining room with a custom sideboard and mirror, some wall sconces, an expanding table with 8 chairs, a hanging lantern and a corner cupboard that you can see reflected in the mirror.  this work was all done in 2003, and the client liked it so much, we did another very similar version of this room in 2008,  for another house he built in greenwich, ct.  the detailing of the sideboard construction for that dining room was our most popular blog post ever.

 

in 2003, we also created this double chest in quartered sycamore, along with a bed , side tables and a reclaimed chestnut tv piece.

this cherry and burl dining room set was another commission that created an intimate dining room on long island.

and, working with the manager at the equinox hotel in manchester a few years back, we designed and fabricated this lighted corner display case where the hotel features its events. sometimes a little used, awkward corner space can become highlight of the area.

 

and this piece was another 'ambiance piece' for a local hotel, the dorset inn, where it lived for almost 20 years until the inn changed hands recently and it went off to the former owner's home, one of, i believe, the only pieces she retained when the inn was sold.

     and sometimes, folks just want to have fun .... why not have your own custom home bar.  we would have liked to make the stools too, but i think that would have been a stretch after the bar project.  one of the most rewarding things we get to do in our work is to work with clients to produce their visions, and then visit those spaces later, after the fact, to see how they use and enjoy them ...

are we interior designers?  not really, and certainly not all the time, but occasionally we get to start from nothing and create a warm and personal space for our clients with our designs, and that is a most rewarding experience.

below is an intimate dining table in a park avenue apartment that the clients helped me to design and they tell me still that they use it 'every day'  ..

more on interior design and a brief discussion of the influential book 'a pattern language' by christopher alexander at this link

"At the core... is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities. This idea... comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people". —Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, front bookflap

another good one i'm reading right now is 'at home..a short history of private life' by bill bryson.

my own office at work

a custom home office, danby, vt

entry hall, manchester, vt

manchester, vt

manchester, again ..

 park avenue, new york city

 

a few more favorites

in a previous post i promised 'a few more favorites'

and here are 'a few more' ... with almost 1000 posts to choose from, 

it gets a little tricky ...

click the pictures to enlarge them ...

interior design, and

'the spaces we make'

the blog post for the link above is mostly highlight 

general thoughts on architectural and interior design, and

comments on the furniture design/make process ...

 

drawing and thinking : thinking and drawing ...

this is an excerpt from an article by ashley ericsmoen,

an australian based furniture designer/maker and professor of design ... 

i have been drawing for pleasure since i bought the book

'drawing on the right side of the brain' by betty edwards,

back when i had to learn how to present my ideas to 

potential customers back in the late 70s. sadly, i made it

through high school and college without ever having an art course.

there are two relevant posts at the link above and both are 

discussions of the creative process

and two articles recently in the new york times and the new yorker

on ideas and creativity

new york times   temple grandin .. visual thinking

 new yorker  'how should we think about thinking?'

'handwork'?  'machine work'? cnc? does it matter?

 

some cnc work ... 1997, using a cnc at a friend's shop

all 'handwork', no cnc ... 1993?

a cnc router is 'just a tool' that lets us

do things no one would likely pay us to do without it.

the tansu stairs .. both of them 

                                     

these stairs went to california, along with about 15 lineal 

feet of railings for the second floor

the photos the client sent that we used for the concept drawings;

the builder provided onsite measurements to create the shop drawings.

the original tansu stairs,  a local project we did in 1989 ... 

with the railings we added in 2014

sam's belt buckles

pretty much anything you want on them ...

and in case you missed it back in july, 

there's my 'old man project', still a work in progress ...

there are 6 posts there that i still add to from time to time .. 

story of my 51.5 years of life in vermont, and a little bit

from before i stepped off the bus in arlington to visit my sister.

i had $6. in my pocket, and everything i owned in one hand.

all for now ... 

interior design 2

second post in a planned series ...

it's hard to believe because snow now covers the bench seats in the photo above, but we're only about two and a half months from this opening photo. at our house, it's all about the sunshine, all the time .... this side faces due southeast, which lets the morning sun come into the bedroom and bathroom below on the right end, and the afternoon light shine in the left end living room, and opposite side of the house. our previous house, from 1974-1996 was on red mountain road, about 15 miles from where we live now... that house was in a beautiful spot with a nice valley view, but was tucked up fairly tightly against a sizable bump in the landscape called, fittingly, red mountain. we were on the wrong side of the mountain .... in the winter, the sun was gone by 2:30 or so.

this time, either by luck or a dogged persistence, or both, we ended up with a house and shop that get very early morning sun and some of the last sun in town ... in designing both the house and the shop, attention was paid to maximizing that sunlight .... it is vermont, and winters are long and in general, tend to cloudiness. so, when you, have some sun, you want to get as much of it as you can .... our garage, for instance, is close, but detached, so as to get that morning light into the bedroom and bathroom below .... personal, (but imho, worthy), obsession ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
but, at all times of a sunny day, it's a delight ... lighting the spaces and the furniture ... yeah ... the cherry bureau was for our own house ... the first piece of real furniture i have made for us, intentionally, (not a prototype or mockup), in a long time. talk about a special spot ...
morning sun in all of these photos ... kitchen, dining and living room here ... like the shop, which we built and lived in first, we designed this house to be, wherever possible, 'one room deep', meaning you can look in the front window from outside in front, and out the back window on the other side ... a principal i think i picked up from a book i get from the library every once in a while, called 'a pattern language' by christopher alexander. one of my favorite quotes from that book goes like this:

"At the core... is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities. This idea... comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people".

—Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, front bookflap

he also goes on to say inside that 'the patterns are regarded by the authors not as infallible, but as hypotheses.' meaning to me ... read em, but do what you want with them as ideas ... we did ... great book, but expensive last time i looked ... and mirrors ... you can't say enough about them .... this one was born of a need to squeeze a full length mirror in somewhere handy. it's tapered, and angled, slightly, so the out of verticalness of it lends interest but yet doesn't distort the reflection.... we have another of these in a small half bath by the front door ... they infallibly make the room seem bigger ..
'amaryllis with prayer flags' ... and for a really nice interior design effect, you can't beat a good houseplant .... this one kit picked up cheap at the local shaw's grocery and this is its second four flower effort ... $5., well spent for about 3 weeks of flowering so far ...

two chestnut cabinets

we finished one up yesterday that we've been working on for a while. it was good to wrap it up since we first started with our design work back in april. there were delays along the way while the stone was changed on the fireplace, which added to my work and required some additional site visits, but all in all, they look about the way i imagined them in my photoshop paste up below ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
here's the 'before' shot. the clients purchased this house last winter and remodeling started in earnest in the early spring ... sam made about 65 feet of new steel and wood railings for the stairs and the balcony; we made an expanding pedestal table in chestnut, and this pair of cabinets. nice job ....
here's my photoshopped mockup using a picture of a cabinet we built back in 2002 ...
the cad drawing showing the interiors of the cabinetsone of our first design issues was accommodating a tv that was wider than the space between the retracting doors. we made a couple of mockups using our standard sanus bracket, with different ways of mounting the bracket and decided on the 'sidewall' approach, which worked fine ...
we also had some fitting issues as the client requested that both cabinets be identical in width. after they changed the stone on the fireplace, that increased the width of the space and thus the cabinets, and brought a twisted spruce beam into play that was previously not an issue.
the tops and molding backer boards actually slid into a slot created in the masonry
we also had to revise our installation plan from a grouted board against the existing stone to a 'slot' created by the masons when they reset the facing. that made me define my spaces pretty exactly and while it was fussier to install made for an elegant look of the cabinets integrating into the whole fireplace surround ... looks greatwhile we were checking the twisted post, we also mocked up a paneled end, which is what you see when you come down the stairs.
tight fit; twisted beam; all ok in the end ...
we also had a kickspace heater on the job and had to integrate a design for the grill into our finished cabinets, as well as make the heater accessible from the top for later repairs.
so, a removable floor was installed,
and the drawers in the lower case are in a separate cabinet that slides in and out of the main cabinet.lots of door parts, something like 85 or 90 pieces, plus the panels.we finished and assembled everything in the shop before loading it up for the jobsite.
below you can see the way we accommodated the 46" tv in the 44" cabinet opening with the retractable doors....
and yesterday, we installed the 'turnstyle' hardware that arrived last week from england.
the finished interior of the left cabinet ... it's a wrap ....
with the big windows to the right, this was a hard project to photograph so i have included these two other images. the sunlight sort of emphasizes the 'orange' in the finish that is much more subdued in person. a challenging project, all in all .. below are a couple pictures of the original cabinets that inspired them, and here is a link to my website listing on them ...