The zen of the craft

In between the hustle and bustle of small batch furniture production, it is important to re-center the creative juices since creativity is the reason most were drawn to the craft. That can be whatever you see fit, for me it is shooting from the hip with the design & build of any object in mind.

Quick rudimentary sketch to start, then this one began with some extremely clean Vertical Grain Douglas Fir and some remnants from a Chestnut Vegetable Tanned hide. Large radius ends on the top and bottom barely peek over the sides to add some shape and dimension to an otherwise very box-like box. I knew I was after a plinth style base but just straight and flat wasn’t helping my creativity, so scallops were in order, all around! Subtly curving all these components quickly became the design language I was after. Integrating the same design into the door pulls by having each door overlap each other, though technically tricky, naturally gave me the radius I needed in the pulls. A high and tight finger jointed drawer was needed, radiused in the front to make it easy to grab and just enough leather was left over for a matching drawer bottom. Lastly, the back was finished off with a thin woven Fir back with some pass throughs for a cord or what not.

This was entirely made from scraps leftover in the studio, a here and there build approach, and virtually no expense apart from a pair of Blum slides, but the indescribable joy that came from this build is what it is all about.