The best thing I ever learned about furniture design came from my mom while we were driving the family Suburban somewhere in the Florida panhandle.
My mom is absolutely the best cook I have ever encountered. She can do anything with nothing. She makes it all look effortless and taste amazing. She, quite frankly, opened my eyes to the possibilities of food in the way my dad introduced me to wood.
So anyway, we’re driving back to our beach rental place one summer in the 1980s, and my mom and I are talking about food. And I describe some fruit smoothie. It’s stupid, really, but it’s a fruit smoothie with some weird combination of fruits and juices.
I say: I think that would taste good.
She says: You can visulaize that?
Me: Yeah, no problem.
Mom: That’s cooking. Right there.
That moment has stuck with me for almost 30 years now, both as a cook and a furniture designer. And after much thought, I’ve concluded there are two kinds of designers: cooks and bakers.
I have always been a cook. I am interested in combining different ingredients until I gradually achieve a perfect balance when making a sauce or casserole or carcase. I taste and taste. Modify and modify. And I’m never satisfied until the very last, when I place the food on the table.
My wife, Lucy, on the other hand, is a baker. She treats ingredients like a chemist. She measures. Measures again. And makes fantastic cookies and cakes that I cannot ever hope to make. But – and this is not a criticism – her cookies always taste the same. My shrimp and grits always tastes different, depending on what’s available and my mood.
What the heck does this have to do with woodworking? Everything.
When I design furniture, I am willing to alter the details at any stage. I refuse to use a cutting list. I simply feel my way through the project, step by step. I can do this because I have a vast library of furniture books and images in my head and in my house that I use to guide me. I start with a basic recipe that is based on the material I have, the photos of similar objects I’ve culled from my library and the desires of the person I’m building the piece for.
When I build this way, I am always happy with the result.
During my years at Popular Woodworking Magazine, I tried to build things according to more of a baking paradigm. I took the print, developed a cutting list and stuck to it. At times this process worked. The baking soda was right to the granule. Other times, I felt like I was simply reproducing someone else’s mistakes.
So, bottom line, I want my mistakes to be my own.
The problem with my approach is that it’s hard (no, impossible) to teach to others. I much prefer the approach of George Walker and Jim Tolpin in “By Hand & Eye,” who teach woodworkers to develop their designer’s eye through exercise and exploration.
My approach is more like Anthony Bourdain. Eat everything. Make yourself sick again and again until you you can find the balance between beauty and botulism. Yeah, sometimes you’ll throw up on the street, but sometimes you’ll find something that can silence a room.
— Christopher Schwarz
Beautiful. Well said. You just defined what a good, original design really is.
Chris, we are a lot alike. In my family is also the cook. My wife, the baker. We rarely get along in the kitchen. I have been trying to take the same cooking approach in the shop. Surprisingly, it works well. Like Mom said, if you can visualize it, that’s cooking!
Correction…In my family, I am also the cook.
You should..oops, rewind.
Is there some wiggle room here in your paradigm? I was a professional baker in a past life, and am still very fussy when baking. However, when cooking, I tend to be quite improvisational (with correspondingly varied results…).
Now you’ve got me thinking on which one I am in the shop. And I’m realizing that my m.o. is usually: 1) get an idea and spend WAY too long trying to get every detail down to perfection.
2) realize I’m not getting anywhere with this, and getting nothing done
3) (hopefully) dive in and see where it takes me.
I guess this makes me a cook in the shop. But it takes me a while to get there. At any rate, I like the post–I’ve discussed this idea, in a culinary context, many times with others, but never thought about it vis-a-vis woodworking. By the way, my wife is most definitely the cook.
Ben
This reminds me of the book “The Pedant in the Kitchen” by Jullian Barnes. I think learning needs structure and by repeating things step by step in a specific order is the only way to then be able to say what can be skiped or done at another time. This is basically the ever so important phase known as the apprenticeship.
Oh Elliott…I’ve been trying to convince CS to read Barnes for years…but “England, England,” rather than his cookery book.
I don’t know about that. I think it’s different for different folks. Structured and repetitive learning bores and frustrates me. I hate following plans or recipes to the letter, even if I don’t quite know what I’m doing yet.
I prefer to learn by failing, both in the shop and the kitchen. Start with an idea based on a plan and mess around with stuff. If it blows up in my face I know not to screw with that step or that ingredient in the same way again. If I have to live with the results of a mistake and figure out why I failed I’ll understand the subject much better than if I follow someone’s instructions a hundred times on how to do the right way. Structure helps with the how, but now the why with me.
I was this way in H.S. and college too, hardly learned a thing in the lectures, most of my learning happened while doing homework and failing privately dozens of times until getting it right.
Brian: Please, please, please listen! I’ve got one or two things to say.
The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them!
Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t NEED to follow ME, You don’t NEED to follow ANYBODY! You’ve got to think for your selves! You’re ALL individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We’re all individuals!
Brian: You’re all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I’m not…
The Crowd: Sch!
Anthony Bourdain will be quoting you soon enough, Chris! “.. between beauty and botulism.” Makes a good t-shirt slogan!
As for cooking and baking, you’ve got it right. But both require a keen understanding of what you’re working with and what you want to end up with. Both require experience: practice, practice, practice.
I’m still at the fumbling mess stage 😉
Excellent article. Reminds me of a Shannon Rogers post about “building without a plan” which is a concept that really lends itself to predominantly hand tool woodworker. Makes me think that essentially this is how the tradesmen during colonial times worked – a clear vision of the final product combined with a willingness to let the design flow organically. Good job!
Hey Chris,
Interesting thoughts.
A few things stand out to me. Of course, you are not advocating working without a plan or approaching a project willy-nilly. Indeed, the ability to successfully alter details along the way comes from having a clear concept of the piece that is maintained throughout the building process. That clarity informs the decisions made along the way, keeping them consistent and meaningful.
In fact, no drawing or mockup can ever specify all the details. The treatment of edges and junctions, for example, cannot be adequately drawn, yet contribute significantly to the impact of a piece.
For me, it’s all about knowing what you’re after.
Rob
Now I am looking forward to the ‘Christopher Schwarz Cookbook for Woodworkers’ filled with recipes for shrimp and grits served on a stylish trestle table a’la Schwarz finished with the finest beeswax. T-bone steak smoked with french oak and tastefully prepared on a homemade Roubo’s butcher block. Casseroles gently simmered in a cast iron dutch oven, that is carefully stored in a campaign kitchen cabinet. There would have to be chapters on micro brewed beers, and planes greased with homemade drippings left over from fried lamb and kept in a little draw under the workbench. Of course the book would not be complete without some explanations of the best methods for sharpening the chefs knives, the best bevel angles and whether they should have secondary angles and back bevels. There would be talk about seasoning wood and seasoning food, after all these two words are sharing three of their four letters. Maybe even a chapter on how to restore a chuck-wagon.
Seriously, that’s a book I would most certainly want the leather bound edition, and I would keep on a roubo book stand at a prominent place in my kitchen, right next to hand carved cooking spoons made of apple-wood. Please don’t let us down now that you have whetted our appetite. 🙂