I made this sketch of a sixteenth century dining chair I saw at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The chair is thought to be either English or Scandinavian in origin, and we did see many like it at folk museums last summer while traveling around Norway and Estonia. The type is well suited for production on a human-powered pole lathe, like the one I designed for use at Mildred’s Lane, and might be a good starting point in developing a unique Chair for Mildred’s Lane in the future. I plan to experiment with the design as I complete my own pole lathe on the Wowhaus compound.

Tagged: chair design, deep craft, furniture design, mildred's lane, pole lathe, scandinavian design, scott Constable, wowhaus

David Brooks tests the completed pole lathe at Mildred’s Lane (photo by Walker Tufts)

The Mildred’s Lane Fellows have completed the pole lathe using entirely materials from the land, and are ready to test its performance cutting green wood, split and foraged from recently fallen trees of beech, hickory and white oak. As I have logged on these pages, my long term goal with this project, which I call Deep Craft: Open Source Bioregional Innovation, is to develop a new chair design in the tradition of the Windsor, but that is identified as an icon of Mildred’s Lane. Over the remaining week, David Brooks, Tyler McPhee and other Fellows will experiment with creating simpler products for use on the grounds and indoors as part of the daily routine at Mildred’s Lane. We hope to offer the best of these for sale on these pages in the coming months, and incorporate what we’ve learned in the process in the design of a Mildred’s Lane chair in the future.

leaf of the American Beech (Fagus grandifolia)

To guide their experimentation with the pole lathe, I’m encouraging the students to mimic the contours of the leaves of select species of tree in the shapes of products turned on the pole lathe. Experience has taught me that the morphology of a specific tree is often reflected in how the wood shapes, the wood’s inherent properties tending towards certain patterns of form. A candlestick that demonstrates this principle, for example, could be an elegant expression of how Like finds Like.

sketch for the lathe support by David Brooks

Tagged: bodger, contemporary art, david brooks, deep craft, green woodworking, mildred's lane, pole lathe, scott Constable, slow design

the nuts of the beech (Fagus grandifolia) are edible

While foraging for materials to build the pole lathe and develop a Mildred’s Lane product, my attention shifted continually from the trees overhead to the ground underfoot. Here is a sampling of some sightings during the course of a morning hike around the property, near the banks of the Delaware River in Northeastern Pennsylvania:

blueberries are ripening in the duff under stands of recently cut white oak

the Horn of Plenty are an edible but elusive mushroom

The Eft appeared in legions after a rain

A Ruffed Grouse

Toads are camouflaged underfoot

A porcupine in a tree!

The catalpa is in bloom

A lovely moth

Athena’s foragings

Tagged: bioregion/vernacular, deep craft, mildred's lane, phenology, scott Constable, upper delaware flora and fauna

Mildred’s Lane Fellow, Tyler McPhee, stands by the completed pole lathe ‘motor’

Mildred’s Lane Fellows David Brooks and Tyler McPhee have made impressive progress with the Deep Craft: Bioregional Innovation Project I initiated earlier in the week. Using material culled from the land surrounding Mildred’s Lane, they have constructed the ‘motor’ for a human-powered lathe, consisting of a sprung pole supported by a simple trestle base, lashed together and held in tension with an elegant Spanish windlass.

laying out the pieces

 David and Tyler getting on the same page

A Spanish Windlass holds the base in tension; note the incorporation of a woodpecker’s marks

The main joint, where a peeled, hickory sapling pole joins a crotch of white oak

Note: All photos on this post by David Brooks

Tagged: bodger, contemporary art, david brooks, deep craft, green woodworking, mildred's lane, pole lathe, scott Constable, slow design, tyler mcphee

an indigo bunting ready for James Prosek’s taxidermy workshop

The artist/author James Prosek arrived yesterday morning and led the Mildred’s Lane Fellows in a taxidermy workshop while I surveyed the land for materials. I walked the perimeter of the property’s 90 acres and was pleased to find an abundance of beech and hickory saplings mixed in with mature white oak, pin oak, hemlock and white pine. I chose a site for my pole lathe/bodger’s shack project and recruited a few of the Fellows to begin foraging materials to begin construction.

view of the Delaware from a clearing adjacent to Mildred’s Lane

artist/author James Prosek leads a taxidermy workshop

By the late afternoon we had gathered a collection of Y-shaped branches from fallen white oak and transported them to the site. We felled a straight sapling of shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) about 24′ long, and peeled the bark with a drawknife. This will serve as the pole for the pole lathe, the springy core of the human-powered machine.

a feast of Delaware River eels and cheese smoked  by Ray Turner, the Eel Man

Some of the Fellows accompanied James to visit Ray Turner, the Eel Man, who traps and smokes eels from the Delaware upstream from Mildred’s Lane. The crew returned with smoked eels, cheese and mustard for dinner, an appropriate feast and prelude to James’ after dinner lecture entitled ‘Eels‘, the subject of his forthcoming book. The lecture/slide show was fascinating, and we learned that eels migrate from freshwater to saltwater to spawn, hundreds of miles offshore, the babies returning to their native rivers. The Delaware hosts an abundant eel population up its entire length, being one of the few remaining large rivers with no damns to hinder eel migration, enabling Ray Turner to trap the fish in his stone weirs hundreds of miles from the sea.

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Tagged: contemporary art, deep craft, green woodworking, james prosek, mildred's lane, pole lathe, ray turner, scott Constable, taxidermy, the eel man

waterfalls of the Delaware Water Gap

The sky darkened as I arrived at Mildred’s Lane Friday afternoon, exploding into a violent thunderstorm with cracks of lightning and a drenching downpour. I was still damp from a mid-day swim in the river on my way up, after a tramp along a steep tributary to see the falls of the Delaware Water Gap .

bridge designed by Roeblin, originally used as an aqueduct

I stopped to walk across the country’s oldest cable-suspension bridge, designed by John Roebling decades before the Brooklyn Bridge, then paid my respects at the Zane Grey museum across the river before continuing on to Narrowsburg a few miles upstream. After a dinner prepared by some the Fellows of Mildred’s Lane we were treated to a provocative presentation of landscape photography by Jeffrey Jenkins called ‘Landscape and Perception’.

Mildred’s Lane Fellows prepare the earth oven

On Saturday the Fellows prepared an earth oven in the ‘quarry’ for the night’s feast under the direction of guest chefs Ana Miron and Janine Slaker. They carried over 200 river stones to line the smoking pit, where the chefs slow-roasted meats, vegetables and tamales, served with fresh salsa and tortillas cooked on heated flat rocks. We had several guests arrive from near and far, and we ate al fresco, the meal served on banana leaves and eaten with our fingers. The group convened to the barn to hear my lecture on Deep Craft, where I introduced some of the tenets I’ve developed over the years and how they will figure into my project for the coming week.

Morgan’s Fancy Grits

This morning we were treated to a hearty breakfast of Morgan’s fancy grits, scrambled eggs and bacon, after which a small crew took to the river for a swim and a paddle in boats built by the artist Bob Braine.

one of three simple boats built by Bob Braine for Mildred’s Lane

Tagged: contemporary art, deep craft, mildred's lane, roebling, zane grey

seascape under a stormy sky off the coast of Brigantine Island, New Jersey

The Delaware River  drains about four percent of the nation’s rainwater into the Atlantic through Delaware Bay, about 20 miles South of the island of Brigantine, New Jersey, where I began my journey to Mildred’s Lane. Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I’ve crossed the river hundreds of times, but this will be my first exploration of its full length as I meander its contours in preparation for my residency on site at Mildred’s Lane, outside of Narrowsburg, PA. I’ll stop in small towns along the way, looking at architecture and regional antiques, thinking about what I’d like to make next week and how it might relate to the river’s rich history.

I traveled overland  through the heart of South Jersey’s growing region, and stopped at a farm stand for peaches and blueberries to eat en route to Trenton, where I’d pick up the road North along the river.

Delaware River at Washington’s Crossing, where George Washington crossed on Christmas night, 1776.

Eighteenth century dwelling at Taylorsville, PA, a self-sufficient village during the era surrounding the Revolutionary War.

bridge connecting Upper Black Eddy, PA with Milford, NJ, as seen from the Bridgeton House Inn

I happened upon a charming Inn with a room that connects to a screened porch overlooking the Delaware, where I will spend the night and gather my thoughts for my project at Mildred’s Lane. I look forward to a refreshing morning dip in the river before getting on the road. The humidity is high and the temperature’s on the rise, and I’m enjoying sitting on the dock sipping the Inn’s complimentary sherry, watching the muddy river go by, where the lilies are coming into bloom along the shore.

lilies in bloom along the banks of the Delaware

Tagged: deep craft, delaware river, mildred's lane, milford, nj, pa, scott Constable, upper black eddy, vernacular architecture, wowhaus

modified Windsor chair concept with steam-bent, bundled parts

Most of my furniture design over the past ten years or so has developed either from a particular need or from the properties of a particular material, usually wood. Lately I’ve been wanting to broaden my target by channeling my resources into the creation of a signature chair, a Deepcraft icon that adds to the canon of classic chair design. One of the goals of this experimental site is to unpack exactly what that means and hopefully discover how to translate a design philosophy into a truly sustainable production model in the process.

If and when I succeed, the thinking behind the chair will fold into the chair’s broad appeal as one of life’s Simple Good Things and I will assuage any guilt about burdening consumer culture with yet more stuff. More ambitiously, the chair will stand in for a philosophy of design with the potential to more broadly influence the built environment and contribute to the (critique of) public taste. Ultimately, my interest is in how the natural and the built environments can work in congruency to suggest mutually beneficial loops. What follows are some of the discursive questions I have that guide my thinking in the process:

NATURAL:

• How has ‘nature’ been framed in Western culture historically, especially related to society expanding into new or unknown territory?
• What are and have been the natural conditions most conducive to human habitation?
• What are examples of human habitation actually ‘improving’ the ecology of a particular place?
• How can the science of ecology inform how people occupy land?
• How has the literature of ‘nature’ (Romanticism) influenced the built environment?
  
• What effect have natural disasters had on the psychology of place? How have people responded to catastrophic change and by extension, how might we anticipate and intercept a global response to the fall-out of climate change?

BUILT:

• In what setting have people been the happiest (most productive, inter-dependent, convivial, cooperative, healthy, etc.)?
• What motivates people to want something beyond basic needs? But, what are the minimal requirements for providing basic needs to ensure rudimentary contentment?
• What have been the socio-economic conditions leading to the longevity of forms of vernacular origin historically?
• Relatedly, when have these conditions been conducive to well-being across social strata?
• What values underlie the concept of ‘good design’?
• How has the notion of ‘taste’ been made manifest in the built environment?
• How have people consistently changed/remained the same throughout the ages, related to concepts of well-being?

Tagged: aesthetics, chair design, craft manifesto, deep craft, green design, mildred's lane, scott Constable, sustainability, windsor

Bodger’s camp in the Chiltern beech woods, late 19th century (from The English Regional Chair, Bernard D. Cotton, Antique Collector’s Club, 1990)

The strategy behind my residency at Mildred’s Lane will be multi-tiered, ranging from the development of a working, craft  production facility on site to the promotion and marketing of Goods to be produced, via the World Wide Web. I’m calling the craft production facility Field Lab, and it will build on the tradition of Windsor Chair making that originated along the Thames River during the 18th century, upstream and to the West of London.

Windsor chair making  in the The Chilterns and Thames Valley (from The English Regional Chair, Bernard D. Cotton, Antique Collector’s Club, 1990)

The actual product will be determined through a survey of available skills and resources reflecting the aspirations of Mildred’s Lane as well as its bioregional provenance. Whatever the specific outcome, my farther-reaching goals will be to introduce some icon of elegant utility that upholds the Deepcraft ethos I’ve articulated on these pages, where equal pleasure is derived from the making, distribution, use and improvement of the Goods made. Beyond my residency, the Field Lab will live on  as a contemporary interpretation of the traditional ‘bodger’s shack’ (pictured at top), taking advantage of modern conveniences befitting the Deepcraft paradigm. My hope is that the Field Lab will elicit the same feeling conveyed in a 1955 letter by Mr George Dean, one of the last traditional chair makers of the Chiltern Woodland:

“It was a strangely enjoyable life, carefree and a bit lonesome if your mate was away. In the spring it was lovely as the trees took on their fresh green leaf, and in the winter, the sighing of the wind and the sight of the birds gathering in the branches when the smoke ascended at meal times. Occasionally the robins would build by the lathe side in the thatch, and hatch the eggs and rear the young. Now and then a wren would make a cosy nest and flit about. Once a flock of pigeons descended on the trees around our shops just after dark. The noise of their flapping wings was alarming as they settled in the tree tops, too exhausted to heed us very much as we worked by candlelight in our primitive way.”

-from The English Regional Chair, Bernard D. Cotton, Antique Collector’s Club, 1990

Click here to follow the thread of posts relating to Mildred’s Lane.

Tagged: bodgering, chair-making, contemporary art, deep craft, mildred's lane, scott Constable, thames valley, the chilterns, traditional craft, windsor chair

map of the bioregions relating to the Delaware River and its tributaries, including portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland (from The Encyclopedia of Earth)

As a woodworker, I make a habit of studying the bioregion for site specific projects to get a sense of scale and context, with an eye towards material provenance, land use and ecology. In preparing for my residency at Mildred’s Lane, I was pleased to find a detailed atlas of the bioregions affecting the Delaware River and its extensive tributaries at the website of The Encyclopedia of Earth. Mildred’s Lane is within the Lower Catskills bioregion, the dark green area at the Northeastern corner of Pennsylvania where it borders New York (top right of the above image), described by The Encyclopedia of Earth website as follows:

62e. Low Catskills
The Low Catskills (62e) is a forested and highly dissected ecoregion less than 5 miles (8 km) wide in northeastern Pennsylvania. Here, the Delaware River has deeply entrenched into the glaciated Appalachian Plateau, creating cliffs and steep-walled valleys. Many high-gradient tributaries occur and stream organisms associated with riffles are common. Topography is rugged for this part of the commonwealth and local relief ranges from about 450 to 800 feet (137-244 m). Crestal elevations are from approximately 1,300 to 1,800 feet (396-549 m) and are high enough to insure a short growing season of about 130 days, varying according to local topography and slope aspect.

The soils of Ecoregion 62e are mostly Inceptisols. Most formed on Olean Till and some developed on Quaternary alluvium. They overlie nearly horizontal, Devonian age sandstone, siltstone, and shale of the Catskill Formation. The soils are characterized by stoniness, shallowness, low fertility, and acidity, which, together with the rugged terrain and brief growing season, make the area best suited to woodland (Higbee, 1967). The natural vegetation was mostly Northern Hardwoods (dominants: sugar maple, yellow birch, beech, and hemlock) (Cuff and others, 1989, p. 52). Some wetland vegetation occurs on poorly drained sites, and northern rock plants grow on the Delaware River cliffs in northeastern Wayne County (Erdman and Wiegman, 1974, p. 50).

The boundary between Ecoregion 62e and the less dissected Northeastern Uplands (60b) occurs at the forest density and topography break shown on the Scranton Ecoregion 62e extends across the Delaware River into New York, where it becomes much more extensive. 1:250,000-scale topographic map; Ecoregion 62e is much more rugged and wooded than Ecoregion 60b

Tagged: bioregion/vernacular, craft, deep craft, delaware river, ecoregion, geography, green design, mildred's lane, scott Constable, sustainable products, woodworking