looking toward the mouth of Tomales Bay We’re enjoying a spectacular fall in West County with warm, dazzling days and crisp, clear nights. The apples have been harvested and my thoughts have turned to loading summer-cured firewood into the shed before the rains and organizing my piles of timber for winter production in the shop. […]
Category Archives: material provenance
California Classical
A few years ago I designed a pedestal to be used as either a table base or, when scaled down, to support a bench. I wanted to evoke the grace and solidity of classical Greek architecture, but based my contours and proportions on the native oak and acorn instead of the acanthus of the classical […]
Nocino
We’re making our first batch of nocino this year with walnuts from our own trees. Our friend Donald Fortescue harvested the green nuts when he was up for a visit in early July. We washed the nuts, quartered them and set them to soak in grain alcohol and sugar, stirring them every day or so […]
Radical Generosity
I had to hit the ground running upon my return home from travels abroad. Ene and I were scheduled to deliver the furnishings I made for the new Edible Schoolyard Dining Commons, and I had just one week to pull everything out of storage and prepare for final assembly and installation. The building’s completion had […]
Tvedestrand Sjekte
I arrived in Norway last week to meet Ene and Aili and a group of friends gathering from around the world to celebrate our friend Wencke’s 50th birthday. Wencke was hosting the group on her family’s compound in Tvederstand, a tranquil hamlet of wooden buildings on a fjord about 220 kilimeters South of Oslo. Tvederstrand […]
Bull Kelp Experiment 2
Ene and I returned to Salmon Creek Beach on the last negative low tide and harvested another load of stray kelp for a new experiment. I found a larger piece of tapered, round driftwood to use as a form for a basket and calculated how many strands of kelp would be required to make a […]