How about a photo of a new piece for a client in Boston?

These events are always distracting – I want to be in the shop, making pieces, designing and working on problems to be solved, but this is going to be a great evening!  Music by Honest Millie, a few surprises from the NH Dance Collaboratives, and work by students of NHIA and inmates of both the NH and Maine prison systems.   And a silent auction of Masters’ work to benefit our educational initiatives.

And if you come early, your admission ticket (click this for a ticket) entitles you to entrance to the Museum all day.  (p.s. – I’m talking at 2pm on the development of the studio furniture movement in the US)

Saturday, September 22nd, 5:30 – 9:00 pm

Currier Museum of Art
150 Ash St, Manchester, NH. (50 minutes from Boston)

I hope to see you all on Saturday, for a rousing good time.  I hope you can join us.

-Richard
Co-chair, Furniture Masters

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Friday, September 7, 5:30 – 7:30 pm

Roger Williams Gallery at the New Hampshire Institute of Art\
77 Amherst Street, Manchester, NH.

No photos here until after the event, to pique your interest.  But I can tell you that the legs are gilded in platinum.

But how about a photo of a desk for a client in Boston?

“Flowing Desk” by Richard Oedel – Ebonized Mahogany, leather, custom cast nickel feet.

In the intervening year, I’ve been focused on several projects that I can share with some of you, and will be introducing those over the next month or so in these postings, so watch this space for updates and photos.

But back to Friday – the event at the NH Institute of Art is all about the collaboration between artists and disciplines.  We have selected several students to react to pieces the Furniture Masters have made, and have reached out to a dance collective to work with our pieces as they have done once before.

I hope you can join us.  And I am looking forward to being in contact with all of you on a more consistent basis going forward.

-Richard
Co-chair, Furniture Masters

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We have many pieces of our work on display, some just out of the finishing room!

Join us if you have some time this weekend.

April 8th Saturday 11-8

April 9th Sunday 11-5

Looking forward to seeing you there.

R

“Cornered” Console Table by Richard Oedel

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So where are the boundaries of contemporary design being stretched and pushed?  Amsterdam.  Eindhoven. Antwerp. Utrecht.

Sure – maybe a few places in the states as well, but the really exciting stuff is in the Netherlands. Like this chair from Martin Baas.

So it is off to Dutch Design Week for a bit of exposure to something completely different.  Over 300 exhibits, studios, and talks about design, making, and the tradeoffs.  And a good bit of wandering around to get the flavor of their design process and aesthetic.

And then to come back with a sense of what others are looking at, where the future of design is headed, and with some new friends to collaborate with.

If you want to be part of this conversation when I return, let me know and I’ll include you.

R.

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So the process commences – everything starts with a rough stick of wood, furry, warped, and showing no hint of what wonderful grain might be exposed as it is milled up.

Courtesy of The Half Blind Woodworker since I have no photos of raw wood!

The surface is flattened on the joiner, the other face made parallel by the planer, and then edges made square and to size by the table saw.  Then onto the bench.

In this case, everything is then done by hand.  The front curve is freeform, and then the holly is inlaid by hand into the tip of the board.

Then the fairing so that the entire piece looks like a wing.  Four more wings, two sliding dovetails, and 14 regular dovetails (all hand-cut) later, we have the first piece of the gallery in position.  You can see the shims that hold everything tight.

This gallery is unusual in that the center section hangs from the top of the desk, allowing a full size blotter to go under the entire gallery.

The sides have to be in place before the drawers are made.  Each drawer is different.

So the center four drawers are in place, and the horizontal dividers for the eight outside drawers are ready.  Here you can see the first drawer being fit.  After the drawers are fit, then the drawer pulls have to be made and inlaid.  Again, each is different.  And each has two screws.  And each screw has to have a pilot hole, a hole sized for the thread, a hole sized for the shank, and a countersink so that the head of the screw sits flush. 12 drawers x 2 screws x 4 operations per screw.  Let’s see – that’s 96 separate operations…..

But the end result – immensely satisfying. 

-Richard

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The buildout of a gallery for a fall front desk is like building an entirely new piece of furniture inside the piece you are making.  It takes a lot of thought and a great deal of craftsmanship to make the design sing, and a long time to execute the final design.

A desk gallery stands on its own as a design element, and yet it has to match if feeling and flavor the piece into which it is built.  This is one of the first design sketches for it.  Every piece is curved or shaped, and the overall effect I was striving for was the look of a built-in inside a sailboat.  All curves, flawless detailing, and a flowing character that propels you along.

It took several iterations to come up with the final design, and it felt right.  But not so right that I thought we should make it immediately, so I took the interim step of building a full size mockup of it out of foamcore.

Nick, who is a RISD Grad, made the mockup – and after a couple of changes we installed it into the top of the desk.  Looks like what I envisioned.

So now we have to make it in Sapele, a relative of Mahogany but with much wilder grain patterns.

First, start with the center fin.  Inlaid with holly, curved and shaped, this is the look I was hoping for.  But there are 78 separate pieces in the gallery, so we settle in for the long haul, and start making and shaping each piece by hand.  The only machine work we can do is the slots for the bottoms and the drawer sides and bottoms.

So it is off to the shop, sharpen all the hand tools, and get to work.

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This is, as the sign on the bus says, an “Embroidery Casket Tour” of the finest kind. I have been working on these little buggers for the past three years, and now I am rummaging in the bowels of museums looking at every casket I can get my hands on, along with 38 other people, mostly women, who turn the caskets we make into objects of beauty and permanent significance.
This is research and discovery, thanks to Tricia Nguyen who is running the tour and is the person who lured me into this bit of arcane history. You can go back to one of my older entries to see the caskets themselves, but this is an overdose. I think we have seen 18 or 20 of them so far on this trip, in Edinburgh, Glasgow, other places in Scotland, York and outside Liverpool. Large ones, small ones, worn ones, ones with brilliant color, and ones made muddy and almost unrecognizable by exposure to the ultimate enemy – sunlight. Not all of them are well made, most look to be Scotch Pine (not from Scotland, but from Germany. By the time these were made, from 1625 to 1675, there were few scotch pines left in Scotland.) but they all represent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours working the embroidery which covers the caskets. I think the work Nick, Heather and I have done on the “casket project” is well worth all the effort. I’ll swing by these museums in a few hundred years and see how many of our caskets are on display.

-R.

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Bart Niswonger – Mineck Fellow 2011

I always like to share my passion about contemporary furniture, so join me for this special after-work event.

The Society of Arts and Crafts is hosting the free event  – from 5pm to 6:30pm at their exhibition space at 175 Newbury Street in Boston.

Please RSVP here so the people at the SAC know how much wine to pour!

Hope to see you there for an engaging conversation about furniture, contemporary craft and the book.

-Richard

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While we moved in a couple of months ago, it is only just becoming comfortable and easy to work in.  Every shop takes on an aura of “home” at some point in time, generally dependent on how well it is laid out and how well the group of people work together in the space.  And after a couple of months, it is truly a special shop.

Carving detail

No place is without warts, and I wish I could have an extra couple of feet around some machines, but the light, the way the people interact with the outside world, and the general orderliness of the space, make it a stellar workshop.  And the air conditioning is fabulous! (yes, that’s right, we have air conditioning, thanks to our landlord, Jamestown and the rest of the IDB, for those few days during the summer when the weather is unbearable)

View of our machine room at the opening party

Right now I am working on several pieces, and the way that we work with, around and alongside each other is becoming more fluid and rhythmic every day.  I love this new space, and hope you each will come and visit us

Fort Point Cabinetmakers at the IDB Makers Guild
25 Drydock Avenue, 2nd floor
South Boston MA 02210

-Richard

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In process – too many boxes and crates

The new Makers Guild floor

Miguel Gomez-Ibanez, President of the North Bennet Street School and I will be speaking about Makers, Making and the Design Community starting at 6:15, right after the official ribbon cutting for the entire Makers Guild a 35,000 square foot floor of our building dedicated to high end makers and craftspeople. Then it is open house and reception until 8:30.

This move has been an adventure for all of us at Fort Point Cabinetmakers, but it has turned out exceedingly well, and we are looking forward to sharing our new space, ideas and work with you next Friday, March 27th.  It’s a great new space.  With talented people to work with.  And it is ours for the next 10 years.

We all hope to see you at the opening.

-Richard

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