menu of bronze patina finishes, Artworks Foundry, Berkeley, CA To me, making is best the more closely it resembles cooking, and a day of making-related meetings is best when it orbits around eating. Our day began yesterday dropping off the completed and finally-approved creatures for our Sunnyside Menagerie Project at Artworks Foundry in Berkeley, where […]
Tag Archives: deep craft
Trivium
Allegory of the Seven Liberal Arts, Marten de Vos, 1590, oil on oak panel I am one of those with the affliction of getting words and songs stuck in my head, sometimes for days or weeks and longer on end. I had the song Midnight at the Oasis repeating in my head during most of […]
Anni Rapinoja
Trained as a botanist, Anni Rapinoja lives on a remote island off the coast of Finland, where she makes beautiful, functional objects from seasonally foraged, natural materials like pussy willow, used to make the shoes and purse pictured above. Rapinoja considers her work as an extension of her environmental activism, drawing us closer to nature […]
Estero Americano Floods
I rode my bike to scout the Estero Americano over the weekend, the body of water dividing Western Marin and Sonoma counties. Almost exactly a year ago I made my first post on this weblog after a paddle on the Estero to explore the availability of sea grasses like bulrush for a furniture-making experiment. I’ve […]
The Week in Bloom
Lilac (Syringa vulgaris) The Sap Moon of March and a stretch of sunny days have conspired to launch a timely Spring, with more plants budding, blooming and leafing than I was able to count, beginning just after the Vernal Equinox. Here are several from on and around our property at about 700′ elevation, Latitude: 38.40222
Longitude: […]
Elm
My favorite woods have three letter names- elm, oak, ash and fir. These names have been so repeated over the centuries, they have been polished smooth like river stones- extra syllables or letters are superfluous to their meaning. The trees themselves are thought to have magical origins, with deep roots in the collective consciousness, and […]
Harris Tweed
I keep my favorite Harris Tweed in the wood shop for chilly mornings, the pockets loaded with cedar shavings to ward off moths. My father bought this one new in the 1950’s and handed it down to me when I was in college. It has served as my armor ever since, whether I am building […]