I’d like to know what styles everyone builds in and why. Also what is your favorite detail that you like to add to your pieces, or maybe a signature detail that you like to incorporate into anything that comes out of your shop?
All of the technical diatribe over the mechanics of shaper cutters has the right side of my brain longing for some creative discussion.
I do mostly original design commissioned pieces in the arts & crafts/art nouveau style. I was originally drawn to this style by the technical aspects of its construction and the cleanness of it’s line. Of the purer arts and crafts style I like the exposed jointery, the symmetry, and the purposefull nature of it’s form. I like to use those elements as a basis for my design and incorporate some of the freeflowing organic aspects of the art nouveau period. I would say that i have also been influenced by the shaker style, japanese design, and the clean lines of modern pieces.
I like to use through wedged tenons whenever it is appropriate with the wedges in a contrasting wood. this detail seems to show up in more of my work than not. I also love the look of narrow pin dovetails and use them on all of my drawers. I try to work in woods that are the desired tone without having to add stains or dyes. If it is necessary to bring out the grain or for some other reason i have no problem doing it, but with so many beautiful woods available in every color and tone you can imagine i just prefer the look of the wood in it’s natural state. I prefer hand rubbed finishes for the soft warm look that seems to really compliment my pieces.
my least favorite thing to build would have to be kitchen cabinets … but you have to do what you have to do to pay the bills sometimes…
Replies
As I started reading your post I thought, "I've got to reply and tell of my WW desires." Then I read further and realized you had already expressed them much better than I could have.
I do mostly ..... pieces in the arts & crafts style. I was originally drawn to this style by the technical aspects of its construction and the cleanness of it's line. Of the purer arts and crafts style I like the exposed jointery, the symmetry, and the purposefull nature of it's form.
Well said - count me ditto.
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Edited 6/14/2006 11:22 am by Rennie
For the past ten years, I have come to increasingly feel an attachment to the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement architecture.
We are slowly renovating aspects of our home to the style. I have admired the work of Lloyd Wright and Greene and Greene among others. The best way I can describe it is to say, that there is a sense of naturalness to their designs that is elegant, simple and uniquely American. Kind of like the music of Aaron Copeland, it just sounds right.
So the furniture of choice was a natural.
“I'd like to know what styles everyone builds in and why. Also what is your favorite detail that you like to add to your pieces, or maybe a signature detail that you like to incorporate into anything that comes out of your shop”?
A great question.
From knowing virtually nothing of furniture styles and traditions, I began with Mission and Shaker, primarily because my reading told me they would be easier to make, for a novice; and the design elements were straightforward. My own taste had, anyway, always tended towards simple, clean lines but with “classical” proportions – golden mean-like things.
I never liked furniture with legs that look like they might come alive at night and scuttle upstairs to get you. Ornate styles, with masses of naturalistic carving look too self-important for me. But when it comes to Art Nouveau and the wider modern French tradition, I have nowhere to hide. I like those sinuous curves but they look hard, hard, hard to make.
So presently I am trying to take a little step in that direction, beginning to make Greene and Greene styled things. This is familiar in some ways – the simplicity of Arts & Crafts – but also contains those cloud lifts, organic chair designs and other curvy stuff.
One day I would like to be skilled and experienced enough to make a good French armoire with 3D curved panels, moulding and so forth. It’s not an ambition, as that would require me to make decisions and be single-minded. But it does exert a pull that may be answered.
As to why I like these styles – I can only guess. Shaker and Mission appeal to some need for simplicity, abstraction and order. The attraction of Art Nouveau is some kind of counterpoint to that – a desire for the complexity of natural form contained, integrated and simplified in a single object.
For similar reasons, I too dislike coloured or highly glazed finishes. On the other hand, stained oak and ash can often look “right”, perhaps because the traditions of van Dyked or fumed oak are so prevalent; and because ash has the ideal grain pattern for emulating many other woods…..?
A favourite detail? I like to reclaim timber and if possible incorporate something of the original wooden object into the new piece. These range through old nails, screws or bolts, long-dead joiner’s or other maker’s initials, original handles to (getting desperate here) cigar burns and fight-dents in an ancient bar top reclaimed from a pub and turned into a coffee table!
Also, a lot of my pieces have stringing or (less often) banding; but only in a minimal or understated way, often to point up joints or an especially pleasing transition.
Lataxe
I've decided to go in a different direction than those that have responded so far. I work with a lot of veneers. Exotics, highly figured, burls and even brightly dyed Birdseye maples. My style, if it had a name, would probably be "Art or Studio Furniture".
Done my fair share of shaker type tables out of cherry. A few Biedemier type pieces(birdseye veneer) and even a 9 1/2' tall Secretary/Ent center from Flame Birch.
When I look at others work I always look for a unique quality, be it wood, craftsmanship, design or all of them combined. To me this is what sets someone's work apart from the crowd.
I am probably no where near the level of many here but for the most part I really lean towards Arts & Crafts style. I was raised around Kalamazoo Michigan and I can remember looking at all the antique furniture in my grandparents home. It seemed as some of the figure in the oak of those pieces wanted to jump off the furniture an dance. My aunt and uncle had a bed with a head board that scared the begeebees out of me because the figure looked almost like fire on the panells. I have gotten away from the older styled mission oak look and have been experementing with contrasting woods like maple and chery or 1/4 sawn oak woth black walnut. My last couple of pieces I really got into the bookmatched look and I am conjering up some interesting project ideas using that approach. Unfortunately I am not a full time wood worker so I probably wont get to try some of these ideas for a while. As for some of my favorite details that I like to add I have a nice arched base design that I use a lot on hope chests that I build as well through dovetails at the corner of bases I build for case work pieces.
I work primarily with woods that are grown in my state.(Cherry,Maple,) Though I have worked with many other native, and imported woods. Most of my work is based on a shaker, or arts and crafts designs. I almost always modify my designs to a point that they may not actully look shaker with rounded edges, hardware, and so on. I use alot of M+T joints as well as handcut dovetails. I use oils, polyuethanes, and waxes as finishes.
Thos. Moser furniture has lines based on the shaker designs. They also put their twist on shaker designs. That is basically what I try to do.
Clean lines, inset doors, stringing, beading, no stain, shellac leveled and buffed, complimentary/contrasting woods, subtle elegance with detail that amazes when a second look is taken, slight curves that are just noticable. The style is often called contemporary, I call it Scandanise (Scandanavian/ Japanese) with a hint of Kernovian influence.
Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
I supose most craftsmen would call mine whimsical.
Jack
Well, not to swim against the tide, but, I build and lust after Queen Anne / Chippendale furniture.
Somewhat surprising, because prior to taking up woodworking at home, my preference was for Scandinavian.
Interestingly, I cannot buy the wood for Scandinavian style furniture for the price of the furniture built and delivered. However, I cannot begin to afford the pieces I can build for myself in Queen Anne style.
Maybe that has something to do with it, maybe not.
I *do* like making cabriole legs and carving shells and acanthus leaves.
If we all liked the same thing, it would be a dreary old world.
Mike
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