Greens Chair Update

Greens chair11/4 scale model of my new dining chair concept for Greens Restaurant

I generally try to avoid working under pressure, but find I often do my best work with my back up against the wall. When our Wowhaus Interview was published in San Francisco magazine last month, I was just beginning to clear the decks and shift my focus to a demanding interior design project. To my surprise and delight, the article inspired a bevy of inquiries about my furniture design, leading to several new commissions, including a new dining chair for the famous Greens Restaurant in San Francisco.

Over the holidays, I’ve designed a simplified, affordable adaptation of my Elder Chair, located a manufacturer and built a 1/4 scale model (pictured above), which I will present to the Greens management team later this week. The new chair combines the open-quadrant-backrest styling of my Elder Chair, which I originally developed for Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard Dining Commons, with the structural program of the Pilot Chair I recently designed and made for Becoming Independent. To mimic the wall of rectangular window panes looking towards the Golden Gate from inside of Greens, I elongated the open quadrants and narrowed the backrest, emphasizing the chair’s verticality. ???? ??????? ????? ???? ??????? I also added an upholstered seat as a concession to comfort, considering the typically fit, lean patron of Greens. ???? ??????? 365 ??? ????

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Touching the Wood

touching wood1My projects always begin with sorting the pile, touching the wood

Like cooking, working with wood engages all of the senses in symphony. Touch plays a major role in the early stages of a project, especially at the scale of fitting out the interior of a new building, like the Guest House that now requires my full attention and has my workshop maxed out to capacity. The start of my New Year has me managing stacks of Deodar Cedar I’ve had custom milled and air-dried for the project, and my days have been resplendant with re-organizing and grading the raw material, which I last saw as logs about a year ago.

After delivery, I estimate I handle each piece of milled wood at least five and up to ten plus times prior to installation, and I learn a little about how best to use each stick every time it passes through my hands. In many ways, this is my favorite part of the process, the most automatic, as the material practically grades itself into distinct piles based upon my assessment of touch, which leads naturally to visual patterning. Handling each stick gives me an understanding of where it lived on the tree, its structural integrity, moisture and resin content, which all informs how the wood will age when used daily in a home. Over the years, I’ve trained my hands to be the advance guard on seeing the wood and its color and grain, and I’ve learned to trust my sense of touch over my sense of sight when grading wood.

touching wood2

Ultimately, the logic of grading wood by touch informs how one interacts with the finished piece. Simply put, horizontal surfaces are designed for durability and a depth of grain that gains character over time, like a familiar path; vertical surfaces are designed for daydreaming, like clouds.

My Grandfather’s Tackle Box

fishing reels

I was lucky enough to grow up with things made by both of my grandfathers- some simple furnishings, a fishing tackle box, fly rod and cribbage board. Neither of my grandfathers earned their livings as carpenters, but they did share a generational disposition towards frugality and were clearly raised with more than a layman’s facility with woodcraft. Both died while I was still a small child, but the things they made continue to hold a magical power over me that I am just beginning to fathom.

As a kid I was often to be found in the basement, the attic or garage when not playing outside. I felt more at home surrounded by raw framing, exposed utilities and the miscellany of things in semi-storage. ???? ?????? Being both physically and emotionally distant from the bustle of family life, these places were my sanctuary, my first workshop. I had inherited rudimentary hand tools for drafting and woodworking from my grandfathers and taught myself how to use them on simple projects. The first of these was a small chest of drawers I made out of pine for my younger sister’s doll clothes. ????? ??? ???? ?????? Copying my grandfather’s fishing tackle box, I replicated each individual piece, carefully measuring and cutting parts from scraps of lumber I found on construction sites nearby. I studied how the pieces were fitted together by opening the tackle box, removing its trays and drawers and studying the connections, the joinery. I would set aside my grandfather’s salt-crusted lures, lead sinkers, spools of line and Penn reels neatly stashed in oil-soaked sacks of heavy canvas, placing everything back in place when I was satisfied I understood the next steps for my chest. ???? ??????? ?? ????????

Most everyone has experienced a feeling of primordial connection to things passed on or to places long inhabited. The meaning carried by such objects and places transcends their value, growing stronger over time. This is especially true of things made by hand for a common purpose, like my grandfather’s tackle box. The simpler they are, the more clearly they embody the value system that brought them into being. This value system is what I call Deep Craft.

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Fish Sculptures Progress

rockfish assembledthe reassembled 1/4 scale substrate for the Vermillion Rockfish sculpture

After tracing sectional contours for full scale fabrication in steel, I’ve reassembled the wooden parts of the two 1/4 scale models of fish sculptures for our Abundance project. Next I build up a layer of clay over the wooden substrates to approximate the outermost surfaces, which will be ceramic tile mosaic on the finished pieces. Next week I will present the clay covered models to the San Francisco Arts Commission for final approval. bwin ????

The layer of clay will also help when we’re fabricating the full size sculptures, enabling us to measure the depth of the outer tile substrate, which will be fiberglass-reinforced gypsum. ?????? Building the sculptures will be a little like forensic anthropology, in reverse. ?????? ???? ??????

rockfish skinnedmodel of the Vermillion Rockfish, skinned in clay

To follow the story of our Abundance Project for the Ortega Branch of the SF Public Library, click here and scroll down.

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Conveying a Load

under palletthe underside of this pallet reminds me of a Mayan city

At some point when making a sculpture or piece of furniture, my job is simply to convey a load to the ground. The perennial challenge is to invent or interpret a structural program that gets the job done but adds something new in the process. para que sirve quanox ivermectina I usually begin by looking to natural forms- to the structural properties of a material, or to the material’s source- the tree in the case of wood. head lice treatment ivermectin But I also find inspiration in engineered forms, like the pallet pictured above, whose underside resembles a Mayan city. comprar ivermectina sem receita The pressed form has me trying to make connections between the mundane task of conveying a load and the magical cosmology of Mesoamerica.

armsmy chair for Becoming Independent conveys a load on two levels both laterally and vertically

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