I just finished reading Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney’s wonderful biography on James Krenov, Leave Fingerprints (Lost Art Press), and I was struck with the impression that, from the get-go, Krenov produced nothing but hits.
I’m familiar with his work. I’ve read his books. I’ve pored over the gallery at thekrenovarchive.org/pieces.php I’d always imagined he made his fair share of clunkers early in his career, but I hadn’t realized he began woodworking in his late 30s, and it seems like he was producing masterpiece-quality work right out of the gate. Where are the misses? The gappy dovetails, the odd wood choices, the misguided proportions? Did he ever miss?
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Personally I find myself wary of mass media and its PR engines; also of the puffs promoting various monetised personalities that are "on sale".
Not to say that James Krenov wasn't a fine woodworker who produced some worthy furniture .... but promotion to guru status is always a suspicious move, especially when the guru is being sold.
There's lots to learn from various woodworking books and magazines (even some websites, despite the many fools and madmen to be seen on Youtube). Naturally the lessons will tend to show the successful procedures rather than those that illustrate various woodworking faux-pas. However, the faux-pas are really lessons too, so a more "honest" or complete portrayal of a woodworking procedure (from design to finishing) is often a better quality lesson.
In the latest FWW there's an article about building an A&C table, in which the author mentions an intial design/construction error that would potentially cause a crack due to differential wood movement. He mentions thinking about it in bed and suddently realising his error - but also how to fix it.
That's better than a pretense to being woodworking-perfect at all times and in all circumstances. Those gurus can often be covering who-knows-what bad designs or contructions with a thick dollop of braggadocio and self-righteousness! At least Krenov was generally self-effacing and probably his own worst critic .... unlike one or two other woodworking "supermen" we could mention. :-)
But others are now employing the Krenov myths and legends in their own sales pitches. This is only going to distort "the real" Krenov.
Lataxe, always erring.
I don't know what mass media or PR engines or monetized personalities you're talking about, but James Krenov hasn't exactly been making furniture lately if you know what I mean. I don't mean to discuss this stuff as something with or without educational value, but rather as one person in awe of another.
Being "one person in awe of another" can be a dangerous business! It hardly matters with woodworking awe but there are other kinds that can lead to some very bad things, as the awe-struck follow the awful one into awful ways of thinking and acting.
"Being a fan" is short for "being a fanatic". Fans never look for their hero's mistakes or admit the possibility that there can be any, so..... I'm a bit puzzled what it is about Krenov that you're seeking to discover since you mention his possible mistakes.....?
With public figures, it's a matter of: who is the person one may be in awe of; or rather, is that person we see in the public domain the real person? If we know a personality only through the mass media then we don't really know them at all. We know a picture of them that someone painted, which may have added glamour; or the opposite.
What is it about James Krenov that fascinates you - the books he wrote and the pics of the furniture he made? Or is it about "Krenov the man" which would require an objective biographer of the disinterested kind rather than a fan or a foe with a kit of PR tools to increase sales of their book about Krenov.
I'm sure you'll let us know. :-)
Lataxe
Well stated.
I also admire Krenov and regularly refer to his books or older fine woodworking issues to find inspiration on design and technique. Truly a great craftsman. I am guessing that his misses hit the scrap pile and eventually the wood stove, that’s where mine go anyway and yes, I have been burning mahogany and teak .
Burning teak can be difficult. I have a tranche got from the inside of an old elevator shaft where it used to be employed as a fire retardent, since it's inclined to smoulder rather than burst into flames if an elevator shaft becomes a chimney in a building fire. Or so I am told by the rescuer of this stuff, as he worked to demolish the building with a ball on a chain and other large & powerful tools we woodworkers can only dream about operating.
But this to the side.
Why have you not awarded your teak and mahogany scraps to the turning brigade, who will turn them into hundreds of beautiful small knobs to be dished out gratis to those such as me, who merely ask for them? :-)
Lataxe
I don’t have an answer but I’ve wondered the exact same thing with every well known cabinet maker. I admire their skill, and the few I’ve met have been quite engaging and approachable.
25 years ago I built “the recycling shelf”. A thing for our old garage. How it stayed intact more than a few days is beyond me, and it was as amateurish and unskilled as anything.
I’ve come a long way, but to your question I’ve often wondered “did (insert spectacularly skillful woodworkers name) ever build their version of the recycling shelf?”
Mike
I'm willing to bet that almost everyone made their first "thing" oùt of need, and stood back proud to have done it. That's how the bug first bites and how the infection (addiction?) Sets in.
As far as design and style goes, it's all a matter of taste. Some love Krenov's stuff, others, not so much. The same goes with every piece of furniture ever made.
Krenov did come up with some unique deviations in style, and those have been imitated and copied since. So they were important, whether you personally like them or not.
Everyone misses, everyone makes mistakes. Museums don't aquire and display those things, generally speaking.
It wasn't always so. I've spent many years looking at period pieces in museums, collections, and books. The best were always immaculate on the outside. The carvings and finishes were as perfect as they can be. The non-show surfaces are very frequently a mess. Dovetails that I consider sloppy. But if they weren't seen, they weren't going to take the time or spend the money to make them better. Backs of pieces used crappy wood that I would never use. But I'm not making a living from it, and they were. The idea that secondary surfaces need to be as nice as the primary ones is a pretty recent concept.
"The idea that secondary surfaces need to be as nice as the primary ones is a pretty recent concept."
That concept was one of the ideals that Krenov championed, at least in his own work. I'm paraphrasing this story which I believe I read in one of his books: Someone asked him why he spent so much time and energy fabricating the backs, bottoms, and other hidden surfaces of his furniture when nobody ever sees them. His response was "I see them". That narrative really resonated with me. Of course, as you said, if you build furniture for a living then you have to make a profit. I've built several commission pieces of furniture over the years and finally decided that concern for profit was taking away my joy of woodworking, so I stopped trying to make money.
This notion of quality (secondary surfaces should be as good as the primary) is a very interesting one, for all sorts of reasons. One perspective on it has to do with what furniture is for.
Putting aside the commercial motive of "making furniture is about making money" there's still an argument for not making secondary surfaces to the same high decorative standards as primary surfaces. In fact, there's an argument that some furniture need not be decorative at all and that the primary surfaces too need not be "perfect", since how the thing functions is more fundamental than how it looks.
Some go further than even that rather controversial proposal. There are styles of furniture that are deliberately inclusive of surfaces, angles and other aspects that are made "crudely" albeit with proper underlying joinery.
There are degrees of this in various styles.
For example, some Cotswold A&C furniture by Gimson and the Bansleys includes many items in which the surfaces, edges and other aspects are deliberately "variable" and made to echo the rough joinery of farm implements made purely to serve function rather than decoration. Yet this functional "look" itself then becomes a form of decoration - a consciously wrought rough-made style.
Some other styles go the whole hog: garden furniture made from chunks of greenwood left entirely in it's natural state from the axe yet assembled with the proper-strong joinery to stop it failing in use. And many other greenwood styles, from gates to ladder-back chairs, include the warps of the drying wood along with the tool-marks of primitive tools used to make them.
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The Krenov style of perfection-everywhere (in design, construction and finishing) does result in some pretty things that are also very functional. For me, there's always this danger, though: it can look like it was made by a machine.
Machine-made stuff often looks perfectly made. Paradoxically, the perfect look often hides some less than perfect joinery and inner materials. That's not true of Krenovian perfectly-made items but the perfect look can condemn it by association with the perfect look of machine-made items.
The "perfect look" aesthetic promoted by Krenov can be (and sometimes is) the basis for a step too far in the definition of "perfection". Some very well made pieces are clad with
a degree of over-perfection, so to speak. In particular, their surfaces are finished with all sorts of goos that are meant to "enhance the grain", etcetera but they end up looking like they are machine-made of plastic.
There are also the pieces that become so decorative that function is forgot. They are beautiful but too delicate to use; so shiny i' the finish they become not-touchable by mucky human mits.
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It's all a matter of taste really. But tastes are formed from all sorts of historical experiences of those who have a particular taste. My own tastes tend to dislike the perfection thing, partly because so much made to look perfect, in this modern world, is a sham with far from perfect innards. Step forward Mr Ikea, with your pretty but ready-to-fail dross.
Lataxe
I should have added above that Brendan Gaffney's book on Krenov is really outstanding. If anyone hasn't read it, I'd recommend it highly.
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