My humble ESY stool can hold its own in a room full of Danish Chairs

As I begin to make small production runs of my ESY stool (pictured above) to fill an increase in demand, I’ve been enjoying sending them out into the world and seeing where they land. Last week I delivered a sample to the office suite of a commercial real estate developer, and left it in a conference room under construction, nestled amongst a cluster of elegant Danish chairs. The stool worked perfectly with the setting, which got me thinking about what makes for a kind of universal style, or a style of no style. In my experience, the style of no style is a consequence of Radical Pragmatism.

I originally developed the stool as a minimalist seating solution for the Middle School Dining Commons associated with Alice Waters’ acclaimed Edible Schoolyard project. The stools stack up to 7 high, consist of just three repeated parts, and use a bare minimum of native, California hardwoods, traditionally joined into a lightweight but durable seat. The ESY stool doubles nicely as an occasional table. Most important, I prototyped and manufactured the original batch of 120 stools myself, and designed it around my minimal production capabilities, knowing I would need to keep costs down to compete with comparable products already in production. The stool is now made in small batches by a local shop, each batch sequenced with wood from the same sustainably milled logs. Sales have increased as the stool becomes available, and I look forward to scaling production in respect of the stool’s original ethos, eventually making it available on the Goods pages of this site.

Tagged: aesthetics, alice waters, chair design, craft, deep craft, edible schoolyard, furniture design, green design, innovation, sustainability, woodworking

Black chanterelle (Craterellus cornucopioides)

The Late Season (text and photo by Josef Szuecs)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, mushrooms generally fruit in species dependent windows of time.  The exact timing of these windows vary from year to year, affected by a number of factors.  In the SF Bay area, we can start looking for a few wonderful late season mushrooms in December and January.  Namely, Black chanterelles (Craterellus cornucopioides), Hedgehogs (Hydnum repandum  and H. umbilicatum), and the Yellow-foot chanterelle (Cantharellus tubaeformis or Craterellus infundibuliformis).

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Tagged: california flora, deep craft, josef szuecs, slow food, sonoma coast, wild mushroom

At a certain scale, production woodwork requires a lot of time spent physically sorting and grading material, then processing it through a sequence of noisy machinery. It can be dull, monotonous work, but I still get a thrill watching grain patterns emerge and generally enjoy the physical labor as a kind of meditation. I find it helps to begin a day of milling wood with an exercise I call balancing the brain. In the past, this has taken the form of a commute by bicycle to my shop, or practicing Tai Chi. Lately, I’ve been spending a few minutes each morning juggling and relearning to ride a unicycle, both familiar activities from my youth. The activity reminds me to be present and aware of my stance, which protects me from injuries associated with repetitive motion, and helps keep me safe and sound when working with dangerous tools.

I love my salvaged, battered unicycle and antique wooden juggling pins

Tagged: craft philosophy, deep craft, juggling, scott Constable, unicycle, woodworking

someone left a rose in a driftwood log

I can’t think of a better way to recalibrate after an intense week of studio woodworking than a morning of beachcombing after a string of storms. I appreciate more and more living and working so close to the shore, and find daily release and inspiration being able to take a walk, a run, or an occasional dip in the surf when the waves are rideable. I always return to the studio refreshed, having put things in perspective simply by tuning in to the flotsam of the day.

beach erosion has uncovered an old engine block

I found a great piece of wood for my first driftwood skate deck

Tagged: beachcombing, california coast, deep craft, longboard, scott Constable, skateboard, sonoma coast, woodworking

Translated from the Latin, Labor Me Vocat is roughly, ‘duty calls’, an apt motto describing my current state of affairs. As is occasionally inevitable in a life of craftwork, my head and hands are now fully focused on realizing a string of challenging projects, and my posts on this site will be less frequent.

I began this experimental weblog two years ago as a way to organize my thinking about craft during the course of daily life and work, as a contemporary take on the ‘jointer’s journals’ of 18th century carpenters. To that end, I’ve come full circle, and am confident the site now functions pretty well as an elaborate articulation of my philosophy of craft, hopefully useful as an idiosyncratic ‘pattern book’ of an approach to sustainable design applicable across disciplines and diverse media. I’ve tried to consistently distill my thoughts in an ongoing manifesto, which codifies an ethos of making and invites elaboration by others.

In closing out this phase of Deep Craft, and in preparing to lay the groundwork for a new body of work informed by my research, I hope to draw some conclusions. I’ve learned to see craft as a bridge between art and design, a way of making aesthetic inquiry empirical. Ultimately, the practice of craft is a strategy or method for matching one’s inner state to outside conditions, which to me defines an ideal state of comfort.

I thank all of my devoted readers across the globe for their support, and hope to hear from folks about their favorite posts as I consider developing Deep Craft as a book proposal. In the interim, please feel free to ‘friend’ me on Facebook. – Sincerely, Scott Constable

Tagged: aesthetics, contemporary art, craft philosophy, deep craft, green design, scott Constable, sustainability

rows of mature olive trees at the Urban Tree Farm (photo: Ene Osteraas-Constable)

I’ve asked Ene to write an occasional post for Deep Craft, and am proud to share her first story (all text and images by Ene Osteraas-Constable):

I greet the deluge of the season’s first heavy rains with relief and contentment, knowing that all the bare root trees I planted are securely in the ground, benefiting from the deluge. Cherry, peach, plum, pluot, fig; the trees all look the same when bought in this juvenile, leafless state; bare branches with a flurry of fine roots beneath. This is, however, the ideal time for planting, while the small trees are dormant.

There is a sense of excitement and exuberance in the nurseries during January’s grey, wet days. Gardeners converge for this eagerly anticipated event: the bare root trees are in! As we mill about the saplings, I smile happily at the elderly couple that proudly share their bare root plum tree: “Isn’t it beautiful? We may not make it long enough to harvest the fruit,” they say, “but isn’t it a beauty?”. Planting a tree is truly a gesture of hope; an investment in the future that I can understand better than any stock or bond.

bare root trees, shipped while dormant, ready for planting

I leave the nursery thinking there should be a holiday, a national day of planting trees. Then I remember Arbor Day. Julius Sterling Morton had the prescience to establish this holiday in 1872. While each state has their own date for Arbor Day, I advocate a National Holiday, allowing everyone a single day off from work to plant or tend to trees in their community.

“I can’t live without the green trees, and nor can you. I’m humbled by the understanding that they could get along without me though! They sustain us, not the other way round.” -Wangari Maathai

Click here to read more about the revolutionary impact of planting trees in Africa.

Tagged: arbor day, bare root, california flora, deep craft, Ene Osteraas-Constable, gardening, phenology, slow design, Wangari Maathai, wowhaus

a sea lion briefly beached itself on Doran Beach this morning as we were walking by

During our morning walk along Doran Beach, Ene and I were greeted by a friendly sea lion, who watched us from the surf before proceeding to briefly beach himself within yards of us as if to say hello. We’ve made hundreds of trips to this beach over the past few years, but have never seen this kind of behavior. Of course, this would be the one time I forgot to pack my camera- luckily, I had my trusty cell phone. As a corollary to the Murphy’s Law adage, anything that can go wrong will go wrong,  I would add, be equally prepared for when things go right.

As any crafts person can attest, there are occasions in the course of making that deliver uncanny coincidences, yet we most often do not prepare for success with the same ardent fervor that we do calamity. I’m not advocating unbridled risk-taking when it comes to safety or security, but suggest making room for the little successes that share equal probability with failure.

the sea lion returns to the sea after about ten minutes of staring us down

Note: After some thought, my theory about why the sea lion would behave this way is that he thought we might have food for him, mistaking me for a Bodega Bay fisherman, whose boats the sea lions are known to trail. Bundled up in my yellow slicker and ‘Sitka sneakers’ for a chilly morning hike, with a two week beard, I kind of resemble those ‘old sea captain’ carvings (see below). I’d love to hear if anyone has had a similar encounter.

I’m beginning to make an image archive of ‘old sea captain’ carvings

Tagged: california coast, craft philosophy, deep craft, murphy's law, phenology, sonoma coast