One-off and running

Why a woodworker? Part 1.

“One-off: happening, done, or made only once.”
The title of my blog indicates that the majority of the commissioned pieces leaving my shop are not production items or repeated designs.

Welcome. I’m looking forward to posting on my brand new blog about woodworking, trees, lumber, tools, techniques, and methods of work. Before getting the “show on the road”, however, I want to spend some time with the question “Why a woodworker?” and how it is that I’ve been engaged in this activity for thirty years.

The short answer is that in 1980 my partner, Courtney Reid, and I bought some rural land, and, following the zeitgeist of the late 1970’s owner/builder movement, built our own simple rural abode. After several thousand of sawcuts a woodworker was born.

Not being one to miss a chance to wax rhapsodic and take the long-winded approach, I prefer the long answer. Kind of like my modus operandi in the workshop: massage the process whenever possible, profitability be damned.

The seeds could have been sown early on to work with metal. In our basement were metalworking tools and equipment that my father, an inventor, had obtained when he bought out a small shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Aside from making some home-made, nearly fatal pipe bombs and other incendiary devises, as well as ill-fitting go-cart parts, I wasn’t  inspired to do much with that material.

What established in me a deep connection to wood was the wonderful furniture that I was so fortunate to grow up with. Furniture in general is a major prop for little tykes: we grow up using it as a support when learning to stand, balance, and walk, to climb upon to reach the unobtainable, to measure our vertical progress against, and to use as construction material for play spaces.

My earliest memories evoke the slightly irregular texture of hand planed surfaces that my small toy soldiers balanced on, the fragrances associated with the unfinished interiors of hundred year old cupboard interiors, the powdery dust of drawers rubbing wood against wood. There were the shaved surfaces of the slats in ladder back chairs and rungs in Windsors that stuffed animals climbed, the intriguing shapes of turnings in tall maple bed posts that I explored while descending like a fireman. There was a dynamic play of color and mood depending on the time of day. Tiger and curly maple could glow with real animation in a certain light. Cherry had a very warm patina, mahogany a stately presence, pine a humble friendliness.

The furniture I knew in my grandmother’s and my childhood home were in large part nineteenth century New England country pieces, not high-style. Most were built as furniture but many had been adopted from their original use.

We were taught to treat “the house” with respect. As distinct from the very informal lifestyle of today, we weren’t allowed to engage in activities that would damage the furniture, i.e., no skateboarding or hockey type games allowed inside. Regular dusting and waxing  kept the surfaces in top condition. As I grew through my teens and into my early twenties I became critical of the importance placed on the decorative importance and materialism of all this “stuff” but if I look back into how I felt about it as a kid, I would not have liked it if a friend abused the furniture because they were all… individuals. They each had a personality, each had a history, each had a sense of dignity, and each had been around for what seemed a very long time, like the captain’s chair that allowed a belt- hung sword to clear the seat. There was no mistaking the signs of handwork in their making and in their original use. For instance, a bellows became a table top, a milking bench became a coffee table, a large dough box converted to a television stand, a storage cupboard to a dry-sink, etc. Chairs emitted very individual creaking noises depending on the type of seat material (rush, fabric, or plank) and single beds creaked with a different pitch than queen sized. I could tell by ear from another room which of the two chests of drawers was being used in my parents’ room. A big drawer in a pine chest heaved open and shut with a muted thunk compared to a maple chest. Drawer pulls swinging to a stop against a brass plate pinged, against wood they thudded.

In my next post I’ll talk about my maternal grandfather, Clarence M. Ballou. I never knew him but am grateful to him for my mother, of course, and for the wonderful furniture he restored and collected which has been passed down through the family. You can see him as a youngster astride a horse on the left in the photo below, next to his family home in North Adams, Massachusettes.