Last week I tackled the piece of our business that has taken the bulk of our time over the last 20-some-odd years, furniture restoration. Now, I will tackle something that Dad has done since he was an apprentice to another fine wood-worker, custom furniture construction, or as we’re calling it now, “artisan furniture creation”.
From the beginning of the design process all the way to choosing which finish to put on a particular piece, Dad and I bicker our way through each decision. We have gone back and forth over things like the height of our “Low Tavern Tables” which you can see here:
When all is said and done, and our unique relational method of making these decisions has finished changing our furniture, we are happy with the result! So, quick answer, we enjoy almost everything about the process of taking raw materials and making something beautiful.
Another piece of it, though, relates to my previous post, where I talked about how large companies are cutting huge corners in their construction process and using materials that will not last, and suckering people into a vicious cycle of buying new furniture every few years after their particle board monstrosities have begun to disintegrate. At every step, from the design process to choosing wood and actually building the pieces, we are thinking about how to make our furniture outlast the person who buys it. We believe that choosing the best materials available ourselves and putting great thought into about how wood movement will affect our design, while employing traditional methods that have served master woodworkers for centuries, will achieve this goal.
We often use reclaimed pine in our furniture (in fact I have saved some boards from my house project for this purpose!), but we don’t restrict ourselves to this, and have built pieces out of all sorts of local and exotic hardwoods, always choosing the wood ourselves. In the interest of making our work last as long as possible, we do employ fine plywoods when we do not want wood movement to ruin veneer work, or Dad’s etchings. You see, if we veneered over solid wood, eventually the veneer would buckle and flake off, due to the movement of the wood beneath, but when we veneer over fine plywood, we can be confident that the veneer work will last, because the plywood doesn't move the way solid wood does. This is part of the “marriage of traditional methods with modern materials” that I referenced in my third post on “Veneer…Good or Bad?”
So, to sum all of this up, we are passionate about building furniture that will last for generations to come. However, we could do that without incorporating etchings or using the designs that we do. We also love our little island, and the beauty and the history of the port of Gloucester inspires the images that become part of our furniture in the form of Dad’s etchings and the carvings and marquetry that we have included in our pieces. We love the history of the pieces that we have restored, and so we use many of the same design elements in the furniture we create, hoping that these pieces will be handed down for many generations.
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