Category Archives: aesthetics

Hancock Shaker Village

I especially love the simple tools the Shakers made, like this dust pan. We took a jog off course on our recent East Coast college tour to visit the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass. This was my first visit, though I made frequent excursions to the Shaker Museum in Old Chatham, NY when I […]

Dedicated Tools

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 […]

Holly Meets the Sea

I typically paint or wax the ends of green logs/slabs to ensure a slow and even curing. I’ve begun to harvest some of the holly trees on our property in anticipation of making small bowls, spoons, candlesticks and other tableware for our inaugural Secret Dinner scheduled for this fall. The trees were probably planted about […]

Seeking Public Peaks

view of San Francisco and the Bay from the Top of the Mark, looking north When we lived in the city our lives were closely tuned to its pulses and flux. We grew and changed as a family at the pace and scale of the neighborhood, circles of friends, walks and talks, through layers still […]

In Praise of Ruins

The Occidental Yacht Club in 2009, before it began to seriously buckle Maybe the Occidental Yacht Club was not such a great idea to begin with. At six hundred feet above sea level, the town of Occidental is a dozen winding miles down to the cliffs and breaks of Sonoma’s unforgiving shores. While I have […]

Colin Reedy’s Dispatch from Bali

A Balinese Jukung (photos by Colin Reedy) The following text and images are by my old friend Colin Reedy, who has been making an extended excursion by scooter throughout the countryside of western Bali. Colin is a Seattle-based designer and adventurer, who recently completed an expedition down the Mekong River by kayak. Thanks Colin! Balinese […]