The completed Community Table is just over 14′ long

Yesterday I installed the top to my Community Table for Shed. The table will spend the next year in Cindy’s studio warehouse in Healdsburg while the building is under construction nearby. By this time, the stickered wood comprising the base will be dry, and turned into auxiliary tabletops for the SHED cafe, to flank the Community Table, which will be installed with a new batch of freshly milled wood when the building is ready.

The completed table is just over 14′ long, with a base of pecan, stickered to dry, and a top of solid sycamore, milled from a Sacramento street tree. For now, the top has ‘live’ edges, and varies in width from about 38″ to about 46″. We may decide to trim at least one of the edges square, but will explore scenarios around the table before a decision is made. Next, I will finish the sycamore top in situ, with multiple coats of a durable, non-toxic polymer made from whey, a by-product of cheese manufacturing.

To read more about the details, process and background behind my Community Table for Shed, please click here.

the sapwood of sycamore has a lovely, lacey pattern

I inlaid an 8″ ‘butterfly key’ to keep a check from growing at the base of the slab.

Tagged: deep craft, furniture design, scott Constable, Shed, sustainability, woodworking

Two identical bases of green pecan, ready to receive the top, a giant slab of sycamore.

Whenever I design and make a new piece of furniture, I’m always keenly aware of how it will age, and how the piece might transform over time to encourage and support future, as yet unforeseeable patterns of use. I’ve been collecting choice local woods over the years, all neatly stickered in the barn, so my design process usually begins with rummaging through my piles for inspiration, making measurements and drawing directly onto the wood with white chalk. My primary criteria at this early stage is whether the piece of furniture I have in mind is the appropriate final destination for the wood- will it do the tree justice? I’ve always thought of my furniture as a way of extending the life of a tree, as a way of simultaneously storing and appreciating wood by putting it to good use; living daily life as an extension of making.

As I continue to collect and store local woods, and especially as I begin to mill trees myself, I’m becoming more attuned to the value of locally sourced, well-sawn, air-dried wood as a commodity. An increasingly scarce resource, fine wood is a good investment and increases dramatically in value, especially if it has the added cache of ecological responsibility, streaming from the urban forest, or as ‘horticultural salvage’. Because handmade furniture ultimately needs to compete in the marketplace with an increasingly sophisticated range of mass-market comparables, it can be challenging to offer a price point in proportion to the value of the material itself, which is a dilemma, even if the quality of the finished product is markedly higher. This is especially the case when ’studio furniture’ needs first and foremost to meet rigorous functional, as well as aesthetic requirements.

I milled grooves into the stickers for better air flow and to allow for movement.

While my way of thinking about wood-as-commodity has lived quietly in the background of most of my furniture design to date, I’ve been wanting do make a new body of work where the concept is front and center, both in the process of making and in the process of using the furniture. To this end, I’m grateful to my friend Cindy Daniel, who commissioned a ‘Community Table’ for Shed, her Healdsburg-based café/retail/community hub offering local foods, goods and quality wares. Shed is Cindy’s contemporary spin on the traditional country mercantile store, and I’ve enjoyed working with her over the past two years designing interior scenarios for the new building currently under construction, a large, open air metal structure designed by Mark Jensen.

My original thumbnail sketch for the Stickered Table

As much as my Community Table for Shed will serve as a gathering place in the café, it doubles as a process piece for the duration of the enterprise, establishing a kind of invented tradition. The table’s base consists of two nearly identical stacks of green pecan wood I recently milled from a dying tree, neatly stickered to allow the wood to naturally air-dry. The table’s top, a massive slab of sycamore, rests on top of the two piles, acting as a gravity clamp to keep the material from cupping. I milled V-grooves into the stickers to allow for better air flow and to decrease friction as the boards inevitably shrink. After one year, when the stock is adequately dry, the top will be lifted and the material removed and converted into functional wares for Shed, either to be used in the café or sold as product to customers. This first batch will likely make small table tops for the Shed café, slated to open in October 2012.. The two bases will then be re-constructed, stacked from freshly milled wood each year, that will in turn be made into a small production run of whatever item surfaces in the course of its drying.

I typically shellac and wax the ends of boards to prevent undo checking.

I like the idea of adding an element of ‘crowd-sourcing’ to the design development of an annual product, taking advantage of a constant flow of people gathered around the table while the material slowly cures beneath. I also look forward to maintaining an ongoing relationship with Shed as a kind of artisan-in-residence, collaborating with Cindy to design products that exemplify the Shed ethos.

Please click here to see the table with the top installed.

Tagged: appropriate technology, craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, green design, green woodworking, innovation, Jensen Architects, scott Constable, sculpture, Shed, slow design, sustainability, vernacular, woodworking

Stereo view of the sun by NASA, showing magnetic fields

As I develop a new body of work in wood, I find myself seeking the simple pleasure of being present in the moment with my material and tools. It’s the ultimate luxury for any artisan to act as one’s own client, which is where I began over twenty years ago. I’ve since internalized the rigors associated with producing ‘work for hire’, however free I’ve been in generating ideas along the way. Like all of my projects with wowhaus, my new body of work begins with a research phase, where I attempt to tap a set of commonly shared goals and parameters that ultimately shape a thing, place or situation, most often under strict constraints of budget, functionality and time.

Though I now have only occasional windows to indulge in exploring new ideas, I’ve earned the luxury of beginning at the beginning, which for me has to do with trying to understand what it means to ‘be present’; what exactly does ‘now’* mean when the usual constraints are removed almost entirely?

(*‘Now’ requires scale to convey meaning. Viewed as a conceptual sample-and-hold of everything happening simultaneously in the universe, the idea of ‘now’ at this scale would be meaningless, ironically resembling something more like eternity. The idea of ‘now’ needs to be understood at a human scale, in some ways as an attempt to frame or reset said scale in temporal terms. ‘Now’ does not and cannot actually exist, the flow of time and energy being in constant motion. Perhaps ‘now’ is more like an expanding membrane that defines what is perceived as ‘the present’, an edge, the shape of everything in flux at any given time. Regardless, ‘now’ can only ever be understood as a singular perspective, a consciously framed viewpoint of consciously moving in simultaneity with the rest of known reality. The perspective of ‘now’ carries most meaning when it is a consciously shared state with others, hence the value of memories and their proxy as photographs, music, or any experience of art.)

Tagged: aesthetics, deep craft, furniture design, scott Constable, woodworking, wowhaus

My brother in law recently commissioned a coffee table for my sister’s 50^th birthday. The table was to be the centerpiece of the ample living room of a large house they recently moved to outside of Philadelphia, to be situated in front of a nine foot sofa opposite a grand, stone fireplace.

The challenge for me has been to design and make a table that compliments both the open, contemporary plan of their new home, a converted carriage house with large interior volumes, and the more traditional profile of their existing furnishings. They wanted the table to have a certain formality for entertaining, while being relaxed enough to accommodate and encourage daily lounging- the table needed to double as an ottoman and auxiliary dining table, without too much worry about supporting the inevitable feet up, dishes and glasses, reading materials and such. I also embraced the challenge of making a piece of furniture with a distinctly Californian provenance that worked in the fairly traditional interior of a home in my native Philadelphia. Most important, I relished the opportunity of making a beloved family heirloom for my older sister that will feature so prominently in the daily life of her family.

I styled the top to suggest a vintage, ‘egg’ surfboard

To support a conversational ring of seating surrounding the table, I opted for an oblong oval, and based the shape of the top on vintage surfboards known as ‘eggs’, knowing the reference would not go unnoticed by my brother in law and two nieces, all avid surfers. I made the entire table of wood milled locally from the same tree, a Paradox Walnut I had been saving for just the right thing for over a decade. The top is laminated from two solid, book-matched slabs, measuring about 7’ x 30” by 1.75” thick. Further obviating the surfboard theme, the top has a gentle figure, reminiscent of lapping waves. I referenced traditional Chinese furniture in the proportions and unadorned styling of the base, giving a nod to the influence of Asian art in both contemporary ‘studio furniture’ and late colonial furniture design. The base gains structure and functionality with the addition of a slatted shelf beneath the tabletop, a place to stow books and magazines, keeping the top clear and strikingly visible.

The rack beneath adds both structure and functionality

This is the second coffee table off the bench, and I thank my brother in law for prompting my thinking about this form of furniture. Coffee tables have such a rich history, and feature so prominently in American homes, I’ve become somewhat obsessed, and plan to make a series exploring possibilities for innovation within the form. My research has taught me that ‘coffee tables’ first appeared in public life in England in the 16^th century, along with coffee, in coffee houses inspired by exchange with the Ottoman Empire.

Known as ‘one-penny-universities’, English coffee houses of the 16^th century were popular public meeting places where ideas were exchanged around low tables recalling those used by bedouin traders. A century later, the form morphed into portable ‘tea tables’ in aristocratic circles, reflecting the new-found popularity of tea, following colonization of India. Beginning in the Victorian era, low tables came into vogue in domestic interiors throughout Europe and America, heralding the emergence of a sophisticated, middle class with the leisure, dedicated space and time to host public gatherings at home.

The form has remained a ubiquitous staple of family life ever since, with subtle variations in styling to adapt to new materials, technologies and patterns of use along the way- radio, TV, laptops, etc, but the primary function of providing a place for convivial gathering has remained constant. I’ve become an enthusiastic advocate for encouraging the role of coffee tables in domestic life, and am very grateful that my brother in law had the insight and trust to commission my first. Thanks, Jeff!

Tagged: coffee table, craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, innovation, scott Constable, studio furniture, woodworking, wowhaus

The first in a series of coffee tables, a lozenge-shaped slab, 30″ x 72″ x 16.5″ high

I’ve begun making a series of coffee tables, encouraged by a recent commission from my brother in law to make one for my sister’s 50th birthday later this month. It’s always easier to make things in small multiples, with variation in material, proportion and construction style. I had honestly never given much thought to the idea of a coffee table, but am discovering that it’s the perfect form to experiment with some new ideas. I also like that the coffee table is inherently casual, functioning as a site for dining, reading, writing, as a footrest and even as seating. Plus, I have a stockpile of wood I’ve been saving that is ideally suited to the task.

The first table to come off the bench is for our own use, a lozenge-shaped monster I cut from a solid slab of locally-milled Monterey cypress, three inches thick. The table has bent wire legs I salvaged from a 1950’s era production table that I plan to tool up to replicate in my shop. To me, the table bridges a Southern Californian ethos of casual modernism with a North Californian ethos of forest stewardship and artisanry.

I like the ordinariness of the grain pattern; you can feel the girth of the tree

I like any piece of furniture to have a stance, an attitude

Tagged: aesthetics, coffee table, deep craft, furniture design, scott Constable, sonoma coast, woodworking, wowhaus

I recently completed a new deck at the entry to my dedicated, 20′ x 30′ wood shop

After over five years developing our rural home and studio on the Sonoma Coast, the constant challenge has been to both maintain and improve our facilities to meet the increasing scope and scale of our projects, while optimizing the compound to allow for a new round of aesthetic inquiry and exploration.

I’ve devoted the second part of the summer to converting an out-building on the compound from our wowhaus office into a dedicated woodshop. I’ll keep the heavy machines in the open-air atrium of the main house, and use the new space as a bench room for handwork- assembly, laminating, steam-bending, etc.. A portion of the space will be dedicated to producing the Deep Deck longboard I’ve been developing over the past two years, using hand-milled logs from horticultural salvage. I’m also eager to begin realizing some new ideas I’ve been brewing for sculpture and furniture using wood milled and cured on our property.

Tagged: deep craft, deep deck, longboard, scott Constable, skateboard, vernacular architecture, woodworking, wowhaus

the 30′ long table returns home, after weathering 5 years at the Sonoma County Museum

When we first moved our home and main studio to West Sonoma County five years ago, Ene and I were commissioned to participate in an exhibition called Hybrid Fields at the Sonoma County Museum, curated by our friend Patricia Watts. We had been milling several storm fallen Douglas Fir trees on our property at the time and proposed installing a 30′ long harvest table constructed of rough timbers for the exhibition, to be sited on a lawn adjacent to the museum. We called the project Tree Trust True and organized a public feast featuring local foods that all grow on trees for the exhibition’s opening. The event lasted just one afternoon and evening, but the table remained at the museum for the next five years, becoming a popular spot for lunches and impromptu gatherings, weathering like a giant piece of driftwood.

The table is constructed of stacked and pinned timbers, topped off with 6″ thick slabs

We recently decided to bring the table back home, return it to the site where the tree originally grew. With the help of our capable friends Hus, Rob and Angel, we disassembled the table, loaded the parts onto a 16′ flatbed truck and reassembled it back at the wowhaus compound, where it will serve as the primary site for an ongoing series of secret dinners we’ve been planning, featuring guest chefs and handcrafted tableware. The first of these is tentatively planned for October First, with chef Leif Hedendal at the helm.

Angel, Rob, Hus and Scott unload the truck

Angel, Hus, Scott and Rob assemble the table, pinning the timbers with long screws

Installation complete, the crew takes a break to savor Ene’s homemade Pozole

ENE’S POZOLE
• Saute one chopped onion, 1/2 tsp cumin and salt and pepper to taste, in olive
oil. Add to the water in the pot, as described below:
• Place a whole chicken in a pot and add enough water to fill the pot double the
height of the chicken + 8 sprigs of fresh oregano; simmer for at least 2 hours,
preferably longer, at least until the meat falls away from the bone.  Add water
as needed along with 4 cups of canned hominy. Simmer until flavors blend.
• Clean the meat from the bones; add more fresh oregano and cumin to taste, if
desired.
• Squeeze in fresh lime to taste or serve as a garnish

Serve with the following as garnish:
• Chopped Avocado
• Fresh lime slices
• Sliced jalapeno peppers
•  Salsa
• Chips or toasted tortillas can be eaten on the side, but we like to add them to the soup as well….

Enjoy!

Tagged: contemporary art, deep craft, furniture design, innovation, leif hedendal, pozole recipe, scott Constable, slow food, sonoma county museum, wowhaus

My 1/6 scale model of the humpback whale tail for our ‘Fluke’ project

The arrival of spring typically finds Ene and myself juggling proposals, installations and fabrication at the wowhaus studio, having spent the rainy months laying the groundwork for new production in public sculpture, furniture and product design. We’re particularly excited about a new commission from the City of Santa Cruz to create a public project for the new NOAA Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center. We proposed making a full scale whale tail to be cast in bronze and sited at the new building’s entryway courtyard, for which we also designed a colorful hardscape. Based on the stylized tail of a diving humpback whale, the sculpture is called ‘Fluke’ and will be approximately 13′ long and 3.5′ high.

rendering of ‘Fluke’, showing the hardscape (illustration by Chemisa Kellogg)

I carved a 1/6 scale model of the sculpture, which is now being scanned by Scansite in West Marin County, one of the world’s most reputable 3d scanning services. A full scale 3d model will then be CNC cut in foam, which we will texture with plaster before molds are made and it is cast in bronze by Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry. I carved the model from old growth coast redwood and Alaskan yellow cedar, both species native to the Pacific Coast where the humpback whale makes its annual migration. The tight grain allowed me to cut precise, symmetrical  contours by eye using tiny spokeshaves, the grain’s pattern changing subtly enough with each shaving to match the two sides. I would occasionally rub the model with wood ash to expose slight imperfections.

Our ‘Watershed Creek Marker’ project is being installed at 5 sites in Oakland (photo: Ken Katz)

(photo: Ken Katz)

Meanwhile, Ene has been working with a construction crew in Oakland, installing the cast bronze stepping stones for our ‘Watershed Creek Marker’ project at five sites throughout the City. To read more about the development of this public art project, click here and scroll down.

research for the visual identity of SHED, a project in development in Healdsburg

I’ve also been working closely with Cindy Daniel, Doug Lipton, and Mark Jensen Architects, designing furnishings and consulting on the visual identity and material culture for SHED, an innovative new concept combining local food, food and garden-related retail, and community gathering under one roof. The project will soon be under construction in Healdsburg, CA, and I’ve thus far designed and prototyped three new chairs, several built-in seating and retail display units, and two types of table, one of which has a stacking base and easily disassembles for storage. I will post more as this project takes shape. Meanwhile, please click here to follow earlier posts.

prototype of my shed stool concept, which can be modified for use as an indoor/outdoor cafe chair

Tagged: chair design, deep craft, furniture design, innovation, Jensen Architects, Oakland, public art, scott Constable, Shed, visual identity, watershed marker, wowhaus

Ene and me reflected in Anish Kapoor’s ‘Bean’ sculpture, Chicago, earlier this summer

Before I launch full bore into documenting A Year in Surf I wanted to update current wowhaus projects. I will maintain a running log of projects as they accumulate, but will soon shift the focus of deepcraft to my active pursuit of surfing. I think you’ll agree that surf culture is in many ways a unifying theme to the thrust of past and present wowhaus projects, which increasingly focus on watershed ecology, structural invention and making beautiful things and places.

Our fish sculptures (’Abundance‘) are coming to life as they are skinned with tile

Our wax ‘Stepping Stones’ are ready to be cast in bronze for our Oakland Watershed Marker Project

We’ve selected sites to install our ‘Stepping Stones’ relief sculptures, drawing attention to Oakland’s many hidden creeks comprising a complex, urban watershed

Conference Table for the managing offices of  ‘Marin County Mart’ (photo taken when the conference room was under construction)

I recently designed this conference table for the offices of Jim Rosenfield, owner of Marin Country Mart. The design developed collaboratively from concept sketches by Jim, with proportional and color consultation from Greg Turpan, who has been instrumental in defining the look and feel of the innovative shopping center. The table is 10 feet long and 34″ wide with 4 x 4 legs in solid Claro walnut. The top is lightweight for its size, being a hollow ‘torsion box’ with a honeycomb core of 1/4″ plywood making an internal grid of 3″ squares. To make a seamless surface on all six sides, the top is skinned with full length panels of MDF, with ‘folded miter’ corners. The top is finished on all sides with six layers of catalyzed urethane, hand-polished to a high gloss. I borrowed from hollow surfboard construction when conceiving the table. I’ve enjoyed working with Jim and Greg on the project and am honored to contribute to Marin Country Mart, which is fast becoming a major Bay Area icon.

Meanwhile, I’m nearing completion of a residential interior I’ve designed and built in Marin County, and permits are in place and construction is underway on an ‘Observation Tower’ I recently designed for a rural property in Sonoma County. Photos to follow soon!

Tagged: deep craft, furniture design, greg turpan, innovation, marin country mart, Oakland, public art, scott Constable, wowhaus

We tested my Greens Chair at Greens Restaurant over a four course dinner

On the eve of our first full week home after six weeks of travel, Ene, Aili and I celebrated with a prix fixe, four course dinner at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. Mike Hale, Greens’ manager, generously comped the meal as a gesture of thanks for the chairs I recently designed that now populate the restaurant’s expansive interior.

My lovely ladies enjoying a delicious dinner, as the sun set over the Golden Gate

By all accounts, the chairs are a tremendous success, adding a touch of structure and formality to the dining experience without detracting from its casual simplicity or bohemian legacy. More importantly, we got to test the chairs over an elegant, beautifully prepared and presented vegetarian feast, and they proved to be perfectly comfortable all the way through coffee and dessert. The Greens Chair is the first furniture commission at this scale where I have not actually made the furnishings myself, hadn’t touched and shaped each piece of wood with my own hands, yet I was pleased to feel the same pride of authorship as if I had.

Most of the Greens Chairs are made of maple, with just 16 in walnut

As we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on our way back up the coast in the lingering twilight, while Ene snoozed and Aili surfed her iPod, I began to reflect upon the relationship between craft and design, content with the fruits of my labor. I’m called more and more frequently to shift roles between maker and designer, and I find it helps to make a smooth transition by keeping a foot in either world.

the view from our table at Greens, looking West towards the Golden Gate

‘Craft’ is too broad a term for consensus on its meaning, which can range from implying a level of skill in handiwork, to standing in for pre-industrial technologies, to being a kind of hobby or therapy. For the sake of clarity, I think of ‘craft’ more as an artisanal production model, connoting things made using local resources- material, knowledge, and energy. In such a craft-based production model, ‘design’ is often an afterthought. The final thing more or less emerges from the constraints of tradition and the limitations of resources. Most products of this system live in the past- the Windsor Chair, basket-making, vernacular architecture in general- but they still influence the visual culture of design. From this perspective, ‘craft’ and ‘design’ are mutually exclusive.

While craft is a bottom-up strategy, design is a top-down one. Design most often begins with a visual representation of a thing to be made, but exactly how it is made is incidental to its final manifestation. When called to design something made at an industrial scale, I begin the process by thinking as a traditional artisan might, given the resources of labor and technology in today’s world. I don’t have any preconception of how anything will look, but trust in an ethos of Exuberant Frugality. I try to optimize material and structure, nest functions and eliminate waste, knowing that this will make room for quality to emerge at all stages of a design’s development, and that the ethos will resonate with anyone who works with their hands.

Tagged: aesthetics, chair design, craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, greens restaurant, innovation, scott Constable, slow food, traditional craft, vernacular architecture, windsor chair, woodworking