Deep Craft video

I’m proud to post the final episode of Kirsten Dirksen’s three part documentary she filmed in one day this past winter when she was visiting from Barcelona, home base for her company, faircompanies.com. This is my favorite one and I think it does a wonderful job of presenting the core of my Deep Craft philosophy. […]

Shaping the Olo

I use all of may favorite hand tools to shape my first surfboard. These late summer evenings I’ve been enjoying dropping into a state of loose focus as I shape my first surfboard from a slab of air-dried cottonwood. An aroma reminiscent of farm animals wafts up as my plane curls ribbons of excelsior. I […]

Exuberant Frugality

We tested my Greens Chair at Greens Restaurant over a four course dinner On the eve of our first full week home after six weeks of travel, Ene, Aili and I celebrated with a prix fixe, four course dinner at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. Mike Hale, Greens’ manager, generously comped the meal as a […]

A Chair with Bay Area Pedigree

Greens Restaurant manager Mike Hale helps unload and install 140 Greens Chairs Early this week I delivered 140 newly minted, Greens Chairs I designed specifically for San Francisco’s Greens Restaurant in honor of its 30th anniversary and subsequent interior renovation. Fourteen of the chairs are made of walnut and will surround a functional sculpture by […]

A Chair for Mindfulness

the Greens management team loved my prototype Greens Chair Like the Golden Gate Bridge that looms across the Bay from San Francisco’s historic Fort Mason Center, Greens Restaurant is a Bay Area icon. With close ties to the San Francisco Zen Center, the restaurant has embodied an ethos of attentive living and eating for over […]

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, […]

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 […]