For the past several years, our preferred way to greet the New Year has been to indulge in a few days’ soak in the Calistoga hot springs at the tip of Napa Valley, just 30 miles east of the wowhaus studio on the other side of the Mayacamas Range. The annual ritual gives us a chance to recalibrate and slow down, modulating our body temperatures as we shift from pool to pool and follow the sun on its low arc across a clear winter sky. The days pass in pace with the conduction of heat and the evaporation of mineral-rich water, leaving us feeling like much simpler, happy organisms.

Tagged: calistoga, hot springs, napa, new years, wowhaus

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

Each fall I sweep the dry duff off of our funky barn roof before the Dampness ensues

One of my September rituals has been clearing the corrugated roof of our funky back barn. The rambling, open-air structure is an explosion of three dissimilar building concepts, fused together with the oddball valleys and warped pitches of an under-planned roofline, one that collects piles of fallen duff of the redwood trees overhead each year. Though it’s a bit of an eyesore to most sensibilities, the building is structurally sound, and I’ve enjoyed studying it over the years whenever I clear the roof during the dry season, thinking about how best to put the barn to good use before the Dampness ensues until the next spring. I’ve learned to appreciate the improvised mess of its design with the same happy reluctance I reserve for the work of Frank Gehry.

The barn’s deceptively vast interior spaces are multi-functional and well-suited to our needs: a portion of the building is where I store paints and hardware, metal-working tools and surplus gear; a portion houses one of our wells; a portion we use as an annex to our sculpture studio; a portion is to store large equipment, a boat and other materials. Over the summer I’ve been trying to clear space inside to better support the increasing scope of our wowhaus projects. We recently sold our broken down McCormick-Deering tractor, which got me thinking about using the barn as a drying shed for the wood I’m about to have milled from our land. In conjunction with my new woodshop and a related body of work I have in development, I plan to source and mill more of my own logs, and have just enough room in the barn to air-dry a few thousand board feet. This spring I plan to build a solar kiln for a final kiss of dry heat.

Taking a break from the work, I lie on my back on the roof and stare up into the redwoods

Tagged: california flora, coast redwood, deep craft, vernacular architecture, 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

It’s been a bumper year for wild plums, and our few trees, bent to capacity with ripe fruit, have been feeding the birds, raccoons and a solitary bobcat, who harvests from our rooftop at night. We’re eating our share as well, and Ene has already prepared a few gallons of ‘plum brandy’ that should be ready for Christmas.

On or way to the beach we pass the Pozzi Ranch, some of Straus Creamery’s grazing meadows, and several smaller family farms, all of who have been cutting hay over the past few weeks. Just as the grasses turn gold, they’re cut into rows where they sit for a week or so before being baled. I love the haphazard architecture of the bales as they cure before being collected and loaded into barns. The ride to the beach smells of sweet cut grass drying in the sun.

Salmon Creek and the Russian River are still feeding the Pacific at high tides, so the surrounding beaches are loaded with driftwood. This year I’ve discovered some surprisingly sophisticated structures built of driftwood. I’m not sure if it’s due to an abundance of good material after later than usual rains, or to an increase in leisure and anxiety given the current joblessness crisis.

Tagged: aesthetics, california coast, deep craft, phenology, pozzi ranch, slow food, sonoma coast, straus creamery, wowhaus

I love my vintage Craftsman “60″ one speed drill

As challenging as it can be, it’s always wise to extract as much satisfaction from the task at hand as from what the task yields. This is especially true in production woodwork, where tasks are sometimes tediously slow, repetitive and physically demanding. My approach is to have particular tools dedicated to specific processes, allowing me to build a relationship with the character of a tool and a level of expertise in knowing how best to optimize its inherent attributes.

I love the vintage Craftsman “60” drill I inherited from my grandfather and have relished using it since I was a kid, but with its one speed operation and 1/4” chuck, it became somewhat obsolete with the advent of cordless drills, kind of like Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel. I could never justify using it out of sheer nostalgia, despite its no-nonsense aluminum casing and graceful mid-century styling. Gratefully, I’ve recently discovered that coupled with a wire brush, my childhood drill is the ideal tool for removing bark and stray fibers from the ‘live edge’ of my slab constructions; the speed is just right, it has just enough power but not too much, makes a pleasant sound, and warms to the touch. Plus, I feel a connection to my grandfather and recall happy times making stuff with my dad whenever I plug it in.

Tagged: aesthetics, craft philosophy, craftsman "60", deep craft, vintage tools, woodworking

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