Like a lot of makers, a significant portion of my time involves working in solitude, or at least in focused isolation on the task at hand. My best work results when I enjoy this part, but I’ve learned how to trick my way into the appropriate attitude to just get the job done if need […]
Category Archives: daily handwork
Back to the Studio
a satisfying pile of offcuts accumulate as I make chairs for Becoming Independent Getting back to the studio this week makes me grateful that my work as an artisan requires such a range of activity. After a couple of weeks of project-related proposal-making, site visits, speaking engagements and interviews with the press, I’m delighted to […]
Bottling the Cider
the Golden Orb Weaver (Argiope aurantia) sets her net in the breezy autumn garden Like all the other creatures marking this time of year- spiders weaving webs around the garden, hungry deer grazing roadside, the long-billed Dowitcher foraging the beach or geese flying Southeast in their familiar, honking ‘V’- we’ve been busy making provisions for […]
In Praise of the Bead Plane
Around the autumn equinox is typically our hottest, driest time of year, with golden brown fields and chalk dry dust under the orchard trees, now barren after harvest. The tips of the redwood branches have turned an orange-y yellow, and happily soak up the sea fog of a rare night. I can feel the rains […]
The Week in Bloom
After more than three years on the land we’re getting a better feel for the rhythm of the garden and the fruit trees and have successfully stocked the larder with treats for the rainy season to come. Working with friends and neighbors, we’ve harvested and pressed all of our Gravensteins, which yielded about 20 gallons […]
Polished
polishing the Dining Commons tables at MLK Jr Middle School in Berkeley You might be surprised to find well-polished, handmade wooden furniture in a public middle school dining commons, let alone any lunch to serve upon it. You might be equally surprised that the tables, benches and stools of Martin Luther King Jr Middle School […]
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 […]