Expedition Cabinet

sketch/proposal for the Expedition Cabinet I have nothing against Fine Furniture, except that I typically favor the opposite. Give me a scavenged roadside pie safe over a Biedermeier sideboard any day. It’s not that I’m into ‘outsider art’ per se, or even collecting antiques, or that I find comfort in reverse snobbery. It’s just that […]

Scent Memory (Yankee Beach Cottage)

In the powdered donut drawer, a bank’s blue ballpoint pens. Beneath the white pine floor damp sand beds cedar cellar beams. Above the front screen door, the transom’s wavy pane’s trimmed, pinned with enough loving imperfection to shed a season’s rains in a blow, sweetening the chamfered glow.

A Chair for Mildred’s Lane

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 […]

A Wholesome Chair

modified Windsor chair concept with steam-bent, bundled parts Most of my furniture design over the past ten years or so has developed either from a particular need or from the properties of a particular material, usually wood. Lately I’ve been wanting to broaden my target by channeling my resources into the creation of a signature […]

Shanty Boats and Scow Schooners

the scow schooner Annie L, built in 1900 by Emil Munder, unloading hay in San Francisco As hay bales begin to dot the fields I’m reminded how little the landscape of West Sonoma County has changed since the late 19th century, when scow schooners still sailed down the rivers to deliver cargoes of hay, timber […]

Ultralight Treepod

Spending time among trees helps in my thinking as I develop a portable, ultralight treepod to use as a dwelling during my residency at Mildred’s Lane. Like a folding kayak, the unit would disassemble, packing into two backpacks to be brought to remote sites. The treepod would have integral solar panels on the roof, and […]

Level at Rest

Level at Rest I’m beginning to collect unbuilt chair ideas I’ve developed over the past few years in anticipation of designing a chair to make during my residency at Mildred’s Lane this summer. The chair will be used in new student housing and will be site-generated around parameters outlined in my evolving manifesto. In keeping […]