Almost 2,000 years ago, Hero described how large wooden screws were cut in Greece. The same saw-and-chisel technique was demonstrated by Louis E. Bergeron (pseudonym for L.G. Salivet) in this detail from his Manual du Tourneur (Paris, 1792).
The following is excerpted from “The Workshop Book,” by Scott Landis. First published in 1991, it remains the most complete book about every woodworker’s favorite place: the workshop.
“The Workshop Book” is a richly illustrated guided tour of some of the world’s most inspiring workshops — from garage to basement shops, from mobile to purpose-built shops.
The author traveled all over North America to discover the workshops featured in this book. The result is an intriguing and illuminating look at multiple successful approaches to shop layout.
Without threaded wood or metal screws, the modern woodworking vise wouldn’t exist. Richard Starr, a woodworking teacher and writer in Vermont, has long been fascinated by wooden threads. Here he examines their history and how they’re made.
The first person to make a screw probably did it by hand the way the Eskimos did. Historical photographs suggest the Eskimo’s technique: holding a piece of antler, bone or wood in one hand, they’d twist it past a knife grasped in the other. With the blade at an angle to the shaft, the knife would scribe a helical mark (a spiral) on the material, resulting usually in a left-hand thread because most people are right-handed (try it!). Then, whittling toward the incision, they produced a buttress-shaped thread that could hold a spear tip to its shaft.
That this isolated aboriginal society had threads is a glitch in the history of technology, since most researchers believe every screw on earth had direct ancestors in ancient Greece. Though helices appear in nature and in decorative arts worldwide, we know of no practical application of the shape until the first century B.C. in the land of Plato and Aristotle. The pyramid building Egyptians never thought of it; Chinese machinery did without screws until the 17th century. So if the Eskimos did come up with the idea on their own, they share the pride of invention with a rather sophisticated culture.
By the first century A.D., screws of wood and metal were common in Hellenistic technology. A press for flattening cloth has survived at Herculaneum (covered by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 A.D. ), its wooden screw in fine condition. At the surgeon’s house in neighboring Pompeii were found dilating instruments (specula) operated by metal screws, as are modern ones. A twin-screw press appears in a wall painting in that doomed city.
How were screws manufactured in antiquity? Fortunately, we had a reporter on the scene: Hero of Alexandria, who lived during the first century A.D. He created several tools of fundamental value, including a basic surveying instrument, but he is best remembered for his simple steam turbine, which was only a toy. An early engineer who wrote broadly about the mechanical technology of his time, Hero described the evolutionary improvement of screw presses used to produce olive oil. Machines identical to the ones he knew survived into the 19th century. He also explained how screws were made in both wood and metal.
Until quite recently, historically speaking, large wooden screws, up to 12 in. or more in diameter, were cut the way Hero described. After laying out a helix on the surface of the cylinder (he used a metal template) you would saw a notch along the mark to the depth of the threads. Then you’d chisel the V shape into the sawkerf. I’ve tried this; it’s easy.
Making the nut was a problem. The earliest method was to use a bare hole with one or more dowels intruding into it to engage the threads. This worked, but lacked strength. Another method was to carve the nut in two halves, then fasten the halves together. This was stronger than the dowel method, but its strength was limited by the integrity of the fastenings, which might have been glue, rivets or bindings of some sort. Besides, fitting the female thread to the male was incredibly tedious. Despite these shortcomings, the practice survives today, as shown in the photo [below].
To carve the female threads, the ancient Greeks commonly cut the nut in half. Robert Yorgey, a Pennsylvania farmer, makes screws for his vises the same way. Yorgey fits the threads by using lampblack on the crests, the way a dentist locates a raised filling with carbon paper. Photo by Richard Starr.
Finally, Hero described (and possibly invented) a mechanical tap that etched a thread in a hole, working a little like a modern machine lathe. This gadget, shown in the drawing below, remained in use for almost 2,000 years until hydraulic presses made the wooden machinery obsolete.
In Hero’s time, if you needed a small-diameter metal screw, you’d probably cut it with a file and use the dowel-in-the hole method for the nut. It was also possible to cast a nut around an accurately filed screw. The worm drive, where a male screw engages a gear rather than a nut, is said to have been developed by Archimedes in the third century B.C.
Blacksmiths had a technique where inside and outside threads were made at the same time. First the smith would forge a ribbon of iron, square in section, and fold it back on itself, then he would wrap the doubled strip around a metal rod. Sliding the rod out, he’d separate the pair of helices, then solder one to the rod, the other inside a hole. Large screws for presses or vises were made this way and jewelers could use the method on tiny work.
Threading taps for metal and wood, similar to the design common today, were described by da Vinci in the 16th century and probably were in use much earlier. Usually these amounted to notches filed on the corners of a square rod, very simple to make but capable of cutting a decent thread.
Note: Hero described this thread-cutting screw box in the first century A.D. Male screw threads are hand-cut on one end of a shaft. These run in a temporary nut, above left, formed by pointed dowels inserted in drilled holes. At the other end of the shaft, above right, an iron cutter is wedged in a slot. The cutter is propelled forward when the screw in the temporary nut is turned.
Dies, the female-threaded devices designed to cut male screws, are probably as old as the metal-cutting tap needed to make one. Screw boxes, the wood-cutting equivalents of the die, used a V-gouge cutter positioned against a nut. I imagine this tool to be very old, although I doubt they existed in antiquity or Hero would have described them. Da Vinci sketched a tool that may or may not be a screw box; if it is, it’s the earliest representation I’ve been able to find. The 18th-century screw box and tap are almost identical to those available today. Several devices are now available that use a router to cut screws in wood very neatly.
After Hero’s wood-threading tap it was probably twelve or fourteen hundred years before people resumed the search for new methods of cutting screws quickly and accurately. Most methods were adaptions of the lathe, a tool that had been in worldwide use for thousands of years. The challenge of threading and, later, of turning screw-like ornamental shapes, stretched mankind’s ingenuity and eventually evolved into the machine-tool industry upon which our modern technology is based. As woodworkers we owe a nod to the early inventors who made possible our labor-saving machinery. And when we cut a screw in wood for a child’s toy or a workbench vise we are a lot closer to our roots than we may think.
Editor’s note:With the first Stick Chair Journal shipping out very soon, we wanted to highlight the woodcut on the cover. >>Stay tuned for a shipping date!<<
Making a Woodcut
When making a woodcut you need to make sure to remember two things:
The printed image will be a mirror of the image you see on the block you are carving.
You have to remove the areas in the woodblock that will not be printed.
In short, this means that the black lines you see on the finished image are the places you didn’t cut any wood away on the block. To make a woodcut, you have to think in the negative and in mirror.
Stick Chair Journal No. 1
I started this woodcut using a photograph of the beautiful chair featured in the Stick Chair Journal No. 1, made by Christopher Schwarz.
I made some sketches to see how the print would look. For sketching, I recently started using black paper and white pens. In essence, this is exactly the process used in making a woodcut.
Rough sketch – face onSketch face on with diagonal lines
I initially wanted to create a ‘grey’ background behind the chair, similar to my wood engraving of a Welsh Highback Chair but the diagonal lines proved to be too distracting for the cover.
3/4 with diagonal lines
So we decided on a blank background instead, to really make the chair stand out. This woodcut also became the design of the Stick Chair Merit Badge.
A woodcut is a play between white and black lines (or, in the case of this cover, green ink and Kraft paper). Though I like seeing a silhouette of a chair, for my woodcuts I like to add some lines to it to mimic light.
I added white lines to the parts of the chair that would be illuminated from a light source coming from the right. Every stick therefore has a white line running from top to bottom.
Design drawn onto wood with pencil
With the design complete, I traced the outlines of the image onto the wood using carbon paper and a fine pencil. I used a piece of cherry wood that was more or less the correct dimensions for the cover.
As you can see, I didn’t mirror the design before carving it. So much for Rule #1.
Next was removing all the “white” in the image – all the parts that won’t receive ink. This is the most enjoyable part of making a woodcut. After all the planning has been completed, carving the design into the wood is a very pleasurable experience.
Carving the blockNearly there
A first quick printing reveals any areas that were not completely cut away.
The first printing usually doesn’t look very good but it shows you where to remove more wood. And it looks like the chair is moving from right to left because of the cartoon-like lines on the right.
When there is a large white area present, ink sometimes ends up on the high spots that need to be cut away deeper.
The finished woodcut
I removed the high spots so they wouldn’t receive ink and cleaned up the rest of the chair. With the woodcut printed to my liking, I scanned it in so it could be used for the cover of The Stick Chair Journal.
The Journal will ship this week and I am very happy and proud that my woodcut adorns the cover.
Join author (and Lost Art Press copy editor) Kara Gebhart Uhl at noon on Sept. 10 at Blue Marble Books for a book reading, related activities for kids and book signing.
Kara will be discussing her book “Cadi & the Cursed Oak,” as well as “the importance of stories – your favorites, the ones that are passed down in your family, the ones you hope to write, the sad ones you don’t know what to do with, the silly ones you share all the time,” she says.
Blue Marble Books – a beloved Greater Cincinnati bookstore founded in 1979 – is located at 1356 S. Ft. Thomas Ave., Ft. Thomas, Kentucky 41075.
Chris and I will be there to celebrate with Kara – hope to see you there!
Figure 14.27. Normal wood, left, breaks across the grain with ragged tearing of the longitudinal fibres; this piece of oak was very difficult to break requiring great physical effort, clamps, benches and bearers to clamp against. At right, the brashy oak snapped like a “carrot” in my hands with little effort.
Jones has spent his entire life as a professional woodworker and has dedicated himself to researching the technical details of wood in great depth, this material being the woodworker’s most important resource. The result is “Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology.” In this book, Jones explores every aspect of the tree and its wood, from how it grows to how it is then cut, dried and delivered to your workshop.
Jones also explores many of the things that can go right or wrong in the delicate process of felling trees, converting them into boards, and drying those boards ready to make fine furniture and other wooden structures. He helps you identify problems you might be having with your lumber and – when possible – the ways to fix the problem or avoid it in the future.
“Cut & Dried” is a massive text that covers the big picture (is forestry good?) and the tiniest details (what is that fungus attacking my stock?). And Jones offers precise descriptions throughout that demanding woodworkers need to know in order to do demanding work.
For the first year or two of working wood in the 1970s, I didn’t come across the term brash wood because the craftsmen I worked with called the condition “carroty” or “carrot wood” and I assumed, being young and naïve, this was the normal name. The woodworkers around me, on finding some particularly weak stick would say things like, “It’s rubbish; the stuff just carrots off in your hands.” It was an apt description because a brash break in wood is visually slightly similar to a carrot broken into two half-lengths.
Brash wood has a variety of related names including brashy, brashness and brashiness. Other names for this condition are brittle heart, carrot heart, spongy heart, brash heart and soft heart. Natural brashness or brittleness develops in the living tree caused by the way a tree grows and the stresses it experiences in life. In every case brash wood is weak wood and it unexpectedly snaps across the grain under a load normal wood of the same species would carry with ease.
Brashness often develops in association with cross shakes discussed in section 13.3.3. In another instance, it develops in exceptionally slow-grown ring-porous species where the tree lays down a high proportion of soft spongy and weak spring growth, and a low proportion of denser stronger summer-growth wood. Ring-porous species with unusually narrow year-on-year growth rings are one possible feature to look for to identify brashness; the result of this growth pattern is the wood is also likely to be exceptionally light for its species, and this may indicate potential brashness. Fast-grown conifers tend to lay down a much greater proportion than normal of weaker, lighter spring wood than they lay down in denser and stronger summer wood, and this, too, is brashy. Juvenile wood is frequently brashy, especially if it has grown fast with widely spaced growth rings. Unusually dense reaction wood in coniferous trees, known as compression wood, is often brash, and this type of wood should not be used in furniture, but carvers and turners may find uses for it (Hoadley1, 2000, p 99-100). Shield (2005, p 133) discusses brittle heart or brashness being the result of growing stresses within plantation-grown Eucalypts. He notes that growth increments develop tensile stresses in their length with each successive new growth increment developing slightly more tensile stress than the previous year’s growth. To compensate for this the tree develops longitudinal compression stresses toward the tree’s core. Finally, an artificial cause of brashness is induced when wooden artefacts are subjected over time to high heat “such as wood ladders used in boiler rooms.” (Rossnagel, Higgins and MacDonald, 1988, pp, 43-44.)
The lesson for woodworkers is brash or brittle wood is not appropriate for load-bearing structures, e.g., floor joists, floorboards, table or chair legs and rails etc. The safest thing is to not use it at all except perhaps for purely decorative items such as small carvings or other non-critical parts. Secondly, materials other than wood might be better choices for shelving, steps, ladders and so on in high-heat environments including forges, boiler rooms, certain areas within commercial kitchens, glass-blowing workshops etc.
Peter Galbert (far left) along with (from left to right) Kelly Harris, Aspen Golann, Audi Culver, Lacy Carnahan and Sarah Watlington.
Peter Galbert is proof that risk-taking pays off. Author of “Chairmaker’s Notebook,” Peter is a teacher, chairmaker and experimentalist. He was also one of the first Meet the Author profiles for Lost Art Press. And with his boundary-pushing research and a second book on the way (“Chairmaker’s Notebook Vol. 2,” slated for publication in the spring 2025), Pete is still working to create a world with fewer stopping points.
Like a lot of creatives, Pete struggled to make sense of his role in a seemingly complete world.
“The world that was built up around me seemed really weirdly impenetrable, growing up,” he says. “Everything seemed so already completed. When we got to the end of the 20th century, I thought ‘What are we supposed to add to this? Somebody already figured out how to make the covers for taillights, for God’s sake. What is my place in all this, as someone who is interested in making things? How does it all work?’”
This kind of early introspection and natural curiosity led Pete to move from his home in suburban Atlanta to see what else was out there. He wasn’t very enamored with the world of high school, disillusioned by a seemingly unshakeable awkwardness.
“But who isn’t awkward in high school?” he asks. “I’m still waiting to grow out of it. I plan for next year; I’ve got high hopes,” he adds, laughing.
Peter left the South behind and adjusted to the shock of Chicago winters (and seasonal affective disorder). The transition opened up the world for him, going forward. He says it was a very productive time, and formative.
“I’ve always been pretty comfortable making stupid moves,” he says. “Giving in to impulse, in the end, serves me well.”
That impulse sent him speeding past the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and he embarked for a year on the road. He drove across the United States and started working with his hands – renovations, gallery jobs, apprenticeships. He settled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he studied photography.
His interests in photography are tied to sparking curiosity and credibility of truth.
“In any sort of making, you’re always alluding to things,” Pete says. “You’re always referencing something, through history, narratives or associations. Bringing people along through that familiarity, you can push them into a new area, where they weren’t expecting to end up.”
Variations on the classical, or subverting an audience’s assumptions are common themes in Pete’s work. Today, he breaks down traditional forms in chairmaking, but their familiarity is retained.
A settee by Peter Galbert (front view).
When moved to New York City at age 26, it was a bloom time of activity. Pete worked with furniture makers and cabinetmakers and built sculptures for artists.
“It was a very informative period,” he says. “I saw doors close, and doors open. I thought, I’m not cut out for the art world. I saw the writing on the wall, the closer I got to it. I’m just not that person.”
From the back.
While in New York, Pete got interested in woodworking. But at the time, the hand tool green wood revolution hadn’t started yet. He was making his own handplanes, experimenting with new tools and techniques.
“I was into learning hand tool techniques,” he says. “But I was nearly laughed out of every shop I was in, almost while I was doing it. They were like, ‘You’re just never going to see that make money. We need to just cut plywood and get on with it.’ And to some degree they were right. But as time has gone on, it’s been really interesting and fun to see how much interest has bloomed on that side of it from enthusiasts and makers now.”
Then, one day, Pete noticed a “for rent” sign while walking the streets of Manhattan. Inside was a 20’ x 12’ storefront workshop, partly occupied by a guitar maker, Justin Gunn.
“He was capable of building a whole guitar on a benchtop with hand tools and I was so impressed with how organic the process was. He took wood and transformed it into something that could be appreciated for more than just its structural integrity or its surface appearance, the tonal quality was like magic. I was super jealous of what Justin made and how he made it. I wanted something like that.”
Pete paid $400 a month to share the space with Justin (who later moved to Holland with his Dutch girlfriend and became a musician). Given that Pete only had room enough to use hand tools, and his desire to build something both beautiful and functional, he set out to make a chair. This pivotal turn in his life happened, in part, because he felt adventurous and – having just finished a project – he decided to break from routine and walk down a different street that day in Manhattan.
“You know, it’s funny because I see myself as rather insular,” he says. “I’m a bit of a homebody. I do my routines. My dog and I basically operate on the same schedule. Although I tend to be pretty provincial in many ways, I’m not that risk averse when it comes to embracing possibilities. If I see something happening, I jump right on it.” In Gunn’s workshop, Pete became a chairmaker.
Finding Community & Creativity in an Old Mill
“Woodworkers are notoriously a romantic lot,” Pete says. “They pour their heart and soul into it and get pennies out. It’s a very tough, tough business.”
By 2000, the low-rent-in-Manhattan gig was up. Pete was faced with a choice: rent another workshop way out in Brooklyn and continue to struggle with the lack of materials (trees) or move to the country. Two hours north he found a farmhouse with 50 acres that he could rent for the same amount of money he would have spent on workshop space in Brooklyn.
At first, Pete lived the country life only part-time. He and his wife at the time commuted back and forth each weekend. But when his then-wife became fed up with corporate life in New York City, and they recognized the fact that they were never very happy on the return drive each Sunday, they took it as a sign and moved to upstate New York for good.
In 2010 Pete moved to central Massachusetts, lived there a couple years, divorced, and lived there for a couple more years. He then moved to Boston. Despite the city living, Pete had a small yard with a separate garage. He worked in a 20’ x 20’ workshop, located close to North Bennet Street School, where he also taught.
Georgia
In our previous profile, Pete pined for the countryside. And he got there. Pete now lives in a small cabin on a friend’s sprawling New Hampshire property. In his free time, he enjoys the routine of walks through creeks and glens with his rescue dog, Georgia. Georgia started off very shy, and socializing with students took time. Now an integral part of Pete’s ecosystem, she can help students like they helped her. “Something I think is interesting about classes and teaching adults – adults are very good at their lives,” Peter says.” Whatever they’ve done in their lives, whatever has brought them to be able to afford a class and decide to do this, they’re good at it. So when they come into a place where they don’t know anything, or can’t do things, or have to learn things day in and day out, it’s stressful. Even though it’s exhilarating and they do it because they love it, they do need to pet a puppy every once in a while.”
Students at work, with Georgia’s company.
This is a shining example of Pete’s teaching philosophy. Accommodating and leveling with students is a cornerstone of his approach. “My students and I, I feel like we’re all on the same road,” he says. “We’re just at different places on it. We’re all the same person, we’re all walking into the workshop not knowing, and trying, and hoping for the next skill, next achievement. The process is very human. And I think the art of it is trying to remember that when you’re working with folks, you need to help them exactly where they are. A friend of mine, Kelly Harris, is amazing at this. I’ve watched her teach and it’s jaw-dropping seeing how comfortable she is understanding where the person starts. She just sees it from their eyes so beautifully. That’s something I think is vital. It’s one thing to have the chops, but to be able to break it down and communicate it and transmit it is as much a skill as the skills themselves. When you see it done right, it is profound. It’s really wonderful, and sharing that is a lot of fun.”
The Mills at Salmon Falls, Rollinsford, New Hampshire.
The interior of Pete’s current shop.
Pete has workshop space in The Mills at Salmon Falls in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. The five-story mill, built in 1848, has been converted to accommodate more than 100 artists, including 30-something woodworkers.
“There was space available, and it was reasonable,” he says. “I was being very practical, but I also saw the potential for a community. Since I’ve come up here, a community has grown. A number of people have come to work with me, or peripherally their partners who are creatives. Now we’ve got a little gravity going now, people are starting to show up to be a part of it.”
Pete in front of one of his classes.
Pete’s orbit is undeniable. And the mill seems miles away from any art world exclusivity. Teaching is an important part of his work, but his approach is quite different from the years he spent traveling to share his knowledge. Today, Pete only teaches at the North Bennett Street School or at his shop. Pete is also giving classes to and hosting the next generation of woodworking teachers. A big part of these classes, he says, is career advising. One thing he likes to share with his students is the breakdown between the trade and the craft.
“This notion that you’re going to be a rock star who just makes stuff at the edge of your ability all the time. That’s just not the life it really is,” he says. “You have to think of creative ways to continue to allow yourself to stay on the edge of your interests.”
‘The Love of Learning is What Binds Us‘
Pete has surrounded himself with inspired and motivated makers. And in his design process, you can see a man on the edge of his creative ability.
A contemporary Windsor.
“You can’t see around corners, so you have to start with one interest, march to the end of it, and see where that takes you and be open to where it might go,” he says. “There are just a lot of different places you can push a chair, which is one of the reasons I still see it as a Wild West. There’s so much untrodden territory. It’s kind of like writing. Everything has been said, but you can still write a really profound book, poem, or anything. Even though it’s just 26 letters and everything has been said. Chairs offer so many frontiers, comfort, aesthetics, structures, materials. So I go at it like, ‘Wow, if I can move this forward, what can that open up in the other categories?”’
“I’m very comfortable ruining things,” Pete says. “That’s been a running theme in my life. I leave a long trail of broken crap behind me.”
Temple Chair.
Along with Charlie Ryland, who works and teaches along side him at the Mill, Pete has been working to develop technology using kiln-dried wood in place of green wood. His motive behind the technology? Accessibility.
“One of the biggest things that has compelled me recently is the lack of resources so many of my students have faced over the years,” he says. “I knew there were issues with sawn and dried woods to be dealt with, but I thought, ‘Why don’t we beat our heads against this and see if we can get it to budge?”’
He and Charlie worked tirelessly – soaking, shaving and playing with sawn and dried ash until it very closely resembled green wood.
“You can split it, shave it, carve it, bend it,” he says. “It has the strength, all the working properties of green wood.”
This technological feat is part of the focus of Pete’s upcoming book with Lost Art Press.
Pete comes from a background of collaboration and toolmaking. Now, he’s working with The Chairmaker’s Toolbox on tool design and consulting.
“This is where my tool-making interest is right now, which I’m always fascinated by,” he says. “It kind of goes back to that notion of when you’ve made a tool, the world becomes so much more malleable to you. Give me a problem that I don’t know the answer to and I am just giddy.”
Problem solving is less of a trench, and more a long walk to the ice cream store, explains Pete. In terms of experimental work, Pete is at a sweet spot. “Now I’ve done it enough to know that we’re going to get there and it’s just wonderful,” he says. “Early on I used to be insecure and I would get really dejected. But now I know where it’s headed. We’ll figure it out, me and whoever I’m working with.”
Rocking Chair.
Rocking chair detail.
Ahead of a class he will be teaching for other woodworking teachers, Pete has been thinking about his design process for chairmaking. He poses these questions as a starting point: “Am I interested in a different use of the materials, the tools, a different geometry for the body, a different aesthetic? Or just a general different process that I haven’t engaged in or want to develop?”
Pete says the flow state he often finds himself in while experimenting connects his constant quest for exploration and joy of teaching.
“When I get into that state where I have an idea or concept I am trying to realize or communicate, that is the delicious part of it,” he says. “To explain something is every bit as lovely to me as to make it.”
Pete describes what he thinks about his future in woodworking, and plans to foster a community of his own. He talks about Lance Patterson at North Bennett Street School (“that old wizard there,” Pete says) and being a useful part of an ecosystem like that. From splitting his time between the busy mill and a workshop full of students, it’s no surprise that Pete’s vision is milling with passionate makers.
“Honestly, as I’ve gotten older, I don’t always have the same energy to walk into a dark, quiet shop, turn on the lights, and make everything happen on my own,” Pete confesses.
So for now, he’s making magic alongside other woodworkers (with the help of a centuries-old renovated mill perhaps contributing).
Pete’s risk-taking has many different forms. The risk of embarrassment, of admitting fallibility, is one of them.
“When you’re in the shop, hoping nobody walks in while you fix one of your mistakes, that’s you attempting a level of control, knowing full well that what you’re doing is communicating. And you do not want to communicate that you screwed up. Or that you’re incompetent or incapable or didn’t know. Sometimes, those are very humanizing moments for the viewer. People don’t want to see you as careless, but they love to see the humanity. My students always love it when I screw up. Then they love watching me fix it.”
Ladle.
By taking risks, in myriad forms and ways, Pete now understands that his view of the world as a child was, in part, wrong: The world is not complete. It’s penetrable, and actually, quite malleable. And there is always room for growth. Case in point: Pete just started a new Instagram page for the art he makes, including sculpture, ink drawings and watercolor studies.
“The love of learning is really what binds us,” he says. “Not even the love of the object, or the love of the actual process. Just having your brain turned on is exhilarating.”
Crest detail.
With “Chairmaker’s Toolbox Vol. 2,” readers will be treated to Pete’s brain turned up to max volume, all thanks to his experimentation and exploration, not being afraid of failure, and surrounding himself with a community that, as he says, “kicks my butt, opens new doors, and inspires me. I’m lucky that way. I’m really fortunate to have those connections. I’ve got a good peer group.”