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

Continue Reading »

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. Continue Reading »

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’. Continue Reading »

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. Continue Reading »

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