David Brooks tests the completed pole lathe at Mildred’s Lane (photo by Walker Tufts) The Mildred’s Lane Fellows have completed the pole lathe using entirely materials from the land, and are ready to test its performance cutting green wood, split and foraged from recently fallen trees of beech, hickory and white oak. As I have […]
Category Archives: studio process
The Week in Bloom
the nuts of the beech (Fagus grandifolia) are edible While foraging for materials to build the pole lathe and develop a Mildred’s Lane product, my attention shifted continually from the trees overhead to the ground underfoot. Here is a sampling of some sightings during the course of a morning hike around the property, near the […]
Mildred’s Lane Dispatch
Mildred’s Lane Fellow, Tyler McPhee, stands by the completed pole lathe ‘motor’ Mildred’s Lane Fellows David Brooks and Tyler McPhee have made impressive progress with the Deep Craft: Bioregional Innovation Project I initiated earlier in the week. Using material culled from the land surrounding Mildred’s Lane, they have constructed the ‘motor’ for a human-powered lathe, […]
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 […]
Field Lab
Bodger’s camp in the Chiltern beech woods, late 19th century (from The English Regional Chair, Bernard D. Cotton, Antique Collector’s Club, 1990) The strategy behind my residency at Mildred’s Lane will be multi-tiered, ranging from the development of a working, craft production facility on site to the promotion and marketing of Goods to be produced, […]
Casting in Bronze
pouring molten bronze into molds for our series of sculptures for Sunnyside Conservatory in San Francisco We were thrilled to witness the bronze casting of our series of sculptures for the Sunnyside Conservatory Menagerie yesterday at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry. It has been an honor to collaborate with artisans skilled in the ancient art of lost […]
Geography of Craft
map of the bioregions relating to the Delaware River and its tributaries, including portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland (from The Encyclopedia of Earth) As a woodworker, I make a habit of studying the bioregion for site specific projects to get a sense of scale and context, with an eye […]