The 1971 “Pagoda Cabinet” – a classical form with the James Krenov touch. Photo by Bengt Carlén.
One of the first furniture images in “James Krenov: Leave Fingerprints” – Brendan Gaffney’s biography of a 20th century woodworking icon – is the “Pagoda Cabinet” that Krenov built in 1971 from European cherry. David Welter, a student of Krenov’s then a long-time faculty member at the school he founded (now called the Krenov School), chose it to showcase in his foreword for the book because it’s one of his favorite furniture pieces.
The Pagoda Cabinet, which remained in Sweden for 50 years, was recently acquired by a former student of the Krenov School, who turned it over to Welter for cleaning and conservation. In June 2022, Welter gave a talk to the school on the cabinet and his process. Watch it below, courtesy of the Krenov Foundation.
James Krenov (1920-2009) was one of the most influential woodworking writers, instructors and designers of the 20th century. His best-selling books – starting with “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook” – inspired tens of thousands of people to pick up the tools and build things to the highest standard.
Yet, little is known about his life, except for a few details mentioned in his books.
After years of research and more than 150 interviews, Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney has produced the first and definitive biography of Krenov, featuring historical documents, press clippings and hundreds of historical photographs. Gaffney traces Krenov’s life from his birth in a small village in far-flung Russia, to China, Seattle, Alaska, Sweden and finally to Northern California where he founded the College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking Program (now The Krenov School).
“James Krenov: Leave Fingerprints” brims with the details of Krenov’s life that, until now, were known only to close friends and family.
In the fall of 1981, 22 students arrived at the new building at the end of Alger Street in Fort Bragg to begin the first year of The College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking Program. The small shop was equipped with all of the elements Hoke and Kavanaugh had procured to Krenov’s specifications. The northern end of the building housed a wood room with two bays (one for exotic woods and one for locally sourced lumber), a small office, a supply room, a bay of lockers that would be swapped out for a small kitchenette after the first two years, two bathrooms and a neutral entry space that housed a table for informal lunches and the school’s library of craft books. In the middle of the building was the heart of the school, a large bench room, outfitted with 22 new cabinets, stools, bench lights and workbenches. Through the back doors on the eastern side of the bench room was a small field that backed up onto a bluff overlooking Pudding Creek; out of the front doors on the western side was a small yard, in which a volleyball court would soon be installed. Through double doors at the southern end of the bench room was the machine room, housing a number of new machines: a drill press, an 18″ planer, a large jointer, band saws, mortisers and table saws. These were joined by a few of Krenov’s machines from his basement workshop in Bromma: a small planer, jointer, band saw and combination table saw/mortiser.
Margaret McLaren, a student in the first class, at her bench toward the front of the room. Photo by Gary Kent.
The school’s layout and arrangement would hardly change in the coming decades. A small outbuilding for storing air-dried planks and a small finishing and storage room attached to the southern end of the building would be the only significant additions to the building’s footprint through the years. The environment built out in that first year remained almost unchanged over the next four decades, visiting alumni often remarking on the time capsule-like quality of the space.
Down the eastern and western sides of the bench room, carefully placed windows and skylights allowed a flood of natural light, raised above the level of the tool cabinets and out of a direct line that would cause unwanted glare. Each source of natural light was outfitted with a shade that could be drawn to cover the window, allowing for slide presentations and more controlled lighting when work was exhibited and photographed. At the front of the bench room, just inside the main entrance, was the teacher’s bench, where Michael Burns, Crispin Hollinshead, Robert Lasso and Krenov would begin lecturing and teaching.
The first cohort to attend the school came from a variety of backgrounds. Some, like Paul Reiber, were local craftspeople, thrilled at the prospect of an affordable education in fine woodworking, not necessarily drawn to the program by Krenov’s presence. Others, like Hoke, had upended their lives to come to study with Krenov on the remote Mendocino coast, and many had been excitedly awaiting the program’s opening. There was an overwhelming feeling among the first class that they were a pioneering group, entering at the ground floor of what was, by all accounts, a new kind of woodworking program. Nationally, the school was novel in its affordability, being a community college education. Furthermore, Krenov’s name and reputation would be a unique draw for the school, one that would save another key expense in opening such a program: advertising. Krenov’s presence would prove to be enough to attract a wide audience, augmented in part by the thriving local craft scene and the craftspeople relocating to the area. Furthermore, the program was affordable. For California residents, the program cost $100 for the two-semester program; for out-of-state attendees, the program was just more than $3,000, well less than the tuition of established programs elsewhere.
Reg Herndon (left) and Charles Argo, both of whom would be in the first group of students selected for a second year, working at their benches at the school in the first year. Photo by Gary Kent.
In addition to its affordability and high standards, there was also the emphasis on Krenov’s “quiet expression and enjoyment and sensitivity,” as he told a reporter covering the new program. That emphasis was different from other schools. It was more concerned with personal pursuit and enrichment, and acknowledged that it was not strictly vocational training for professionals. While there was an air of excitement and novelty in the introductory year, it was attenuated by the consideration that the school’s faculty and students were still gaining their footing. Hoke, Burns, Hollinshead and Lasso were learning Krenov’s process and peculiarities. There was little disagreement among the faculty about Krenov’s work and philosophy, but each of the faculty members was still learning how to interact with Krenov as a colleague. Krenov could inspire and raise the spirits of a student doing his or her best work, but it was often the other instructors who would bolster those students struggling with the high standards put forth by Krenov’s demanding eye and approach. Krenov made no attempt to disguise his judgment of the choices made by students, and encouraged them to pursue the same rigorous and uncompromising goals he had set for himself.
“A woodworker first must learn the alphabet,” Krenov told the Sacramento Bee in 1986, speaking about his prescribed steps in beginning a woodworking practice. “Then a little spelling, then a little grammar. Then maybe you will write a little poetry.” Krenov was wary of some students’ desire to move too quickly, or to begin exploring less conservative or traditional approaches. To temper this overextension, the first projects were limited in scope; they had to be “simple, small, solid (not veneered) and ‘sweet.’” Students who arrived with the aim of studying with Krenov had a wide variety of impressions of the man they met. Those with the most idealistic impression of Krenov’s philosophy were often surprised by Krenov’s forceful emphasis on technique and an unwillingness to compromise his standards when applied to student work. In the environment of the Mendocino coast, which proffered an egalitarian philosophy of inclusion, Krenov’s teaching style might have been perceived as an older and more “top-down” approach. Of course, the school had been built around his presence, and he was explicitly placed as the lead instructor and lecturer at the school.
“Some of them clearly had difficulty dealing with Krenov’s sometimes temperamental nature, especially after having formed an image of him based on his writings,” wrote Paul Bertorelli in his 1983 comparison of Krenov’s and Wendell Castle’s different teaching approaches for Fine Woodworking. “‘I think we all went in expecting a guru of woodworking,’ [Ken] Walker said, ‘but we found Jim to be a real person with all the same problems, conflicts and idiosyncrasies as the rest of us.’”
Michael Burns became a source of encouragement for students who had difficulties with Krenov’s critique; while Burns held a high standard and perception of the work the students could attain, he also took on a role of mediator and motivator. When a student encountered resistance or a negative critique of their work from Krenov, Burns often invited them out to the back of the school for encouragement or a beer.
The lease of Krenov’s machines to the school during the first three years of its program allowed Krenov to bring his machines over from Sweden and retain access to them, though the wear imposed from their being used by 22 students would lead Krenov to move them to a student’s workshop when the lease expired. Image courtesy of the Krenov School.
“Most of his students, once past the first terrors of His Judgments, just call him Jim,” Glenn Gordon wrote in his 1985 profile of Krenov and the school for Fine Woodworking. Those who were able to endure Krenov’s demanding standards and frankness in feedback were rewarded by his talents as a lecturer and his “ability to enable students to do their best,” as one alumnus of the school remembers. Many students from the first years encountered a sensitivity and passion in his teaching that bolstered and raised their own considerations of what they could accomplish. In Krenov, they saw the spirited and impassioned craftsperson from the books, no less idealistic in person. Many came with the expectation to work in concert with Krenov’s philosophy and approach, and accepted a narrower focus of aesthetics and processes closely aligned with Krenov. Krenov did not demand that students emulate his exact aesthetic; in fact, he was often most critical or demanding of students who reproduced his designs, which rarely met his standards.
“If you’re going to do something that someone else has done, because you really like it, then maybe the best thing to do is not to tinker with it too much and start from scratch instead,” Krenov would later say in a 1994 lecture. “Just say, well, okay, I’ve got this thing in the back of my head, but what I’m gonna do is going to be different enough, and good enough, to where it will stand on its own and it’s not just a bad imitation.”
Krenov (1920-2009) was one of the most influential woodworking writers, instructors and designers of the 20th century. His best-selling books – starting with “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook” – inspired tens of thousands of people to pick up the tools and build things to the highest standard.
Yet, little is known about his life, except for a few details mentioned in his books.
After years of research and more than 150 interviews, Gaffney has produced the first and definitive biography of Krenov, featuring historical documents, press clippings and hundreds of historical photographs. Gaffney traces Krenov’s life from his birth in a small village in far-flung Russia, to China, Seattle, Alaska, Sweden and finally to Northern California where he founded the College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking Program (now The Krenov School).
“James Krenov: Leave Fingerprints” brims with the details of Krenov’s life that, until now, were known only to close friends and family. The book begins by examining the noble origins of Krenov’s mother in Russia, and her flight into the wilderness during the country’s revolution. After Krenov is born among the Chukchi at a trade outpost, the Krenovs flee to Shanghai and then the United States. After time in Alaska and Seattle, Krenov heads to Sweden where he works in a factory and tries to get his writing published.
By the 1990s, the students who were coming through the school were, like the wider public, most familiar with the work that Krenov had published. But in the subsequent decades since the publications of his books, Krenov’s work had continued to evolve, and he began pursuing pieces that had features that were novel and outside his previous work. Hjorth-Westh remembered that some of Krenov’s work during his school years pushed Krenov’s own aesthetics to a new place. While his output was exclusively free-standing cabinets, most of which took the cabinet on a stand form, the early 1990s saw the introduction of a number of new techniques into his work, due in part to the exchange of ideas and inspirations he had with students and colleagues at the school. In 1991, Krenov put a small wall cabinet with a painted interior, the “Spalted V-Front Wall Cabinet,” in the 10th anniversary show at Pritam & Eames. The use of paint was a shock to many of his students, though he had used paint on the interior of two other cabinets, the “Bits of Maple Wall Cabinet” in 1962 and the “Birdseye V-Front Wall Cabinet” made in 1972. He also began exploring the use of large laminated panels inside his cabinets, accentuating their unique division of the internal space by placing glass doors on all sides of the cabinet.
A defining example of Krenov’s late explorations of technique was a series of parquetry cabinets, in which he explored a painterly composition of shop-sawn veneers. He made the first of these cabinets in 1993, and took advantage of the emptying out of the classroom at the end of the school year to spread his freshly sawn walnut veneers across several of the benches. Interestingly, the pieces may have found their strongest influence from a series of linen presses Carl Malmsten had executed nearly 50 years earlier. Malmsten’s furniture designs often featured abstract and geometric arrangements of parquetry, and even used walnut veneers in their execution. After this first walnut cabinet, Krenov continued to include parquetry as a central feature in a number of pieces, including “Fire and Smoke,” a rare “titled” cabinet Krenov made with pear and alarice woods in 1994 that found its way to Pritam & Eames. He hinted at this willingness to experiment in his essays published in “With Wakened Hands” in 2000, the book he was working to produce throughout the 1990s to showcase both his and his students’ work.
Krenov’s pear and alarice “Fire and Smoke” cabinet, completed in 1994. At 74, Krenov was still experimenting with new ideas. Photo by David Welter.
“I work fairly well, seeing how I have to overcome the arthritis in my right hand,” Krenov wrote. “I am able to work in a way that pleases me, that fills me with a purpose and with a certain secret satisfaction I enjoy sharing with my students … These last few years I have found a new freedom to experiment and do things I have never before dared.”
These parquetry cabinets came to be a favorite among many of Krenov’s admirers, for their deft application of Krenov’s composition skills with wood grain. The use of veneers allowed Krenov the freedom to compose much more complex or rich grain figures. Brain Newell, who saw these pieces come together, recalls that they represented a moment of continuing innovation and exploration.
“The work shows me that one can be dynamic and innovative within a very narrow framework, and that reinventing the wheel in furniture is a game of diminishing returns,” Newell recalls. “Krenov kept his simple, straight forms and let the wood do the talking, and in this sense he remained true to his lifelong philosophy.”
After the painted wall cabinet from 1991, Krenov ceased making any form outside his freestanding cabinets on a stand, though the variety within that format was significant. By the 1990s, Krenov was unburdened by specific demands of his work; those pieces that were not speculative (undertaken completely at his own will and not for an intended customer) were commissioned by an audience that was happy to let the cabinetmaker make whatever pieces he was interested in making. Many such commissions were subject to some short correspondence, in which Krenov might solicit some vague guidance from the client.
Krenov presents his “Oak Parquetry” cabinet to the class in October 1997. This was the second smaller parquetry cabinet to be made on a stand, rather than a larger base cabinet. Each new cabinet was a chance to play with the forms and techniques that had piqued his interest. Photo by David Welter.
“You indicated that sometimes a ‘hint,’ left gently in the wake of a former conversation, would revisit your mind’s eye while you were forming a piece, and you would find yourself creating a work that fit someone’s particular visitation,” one client wrote in 1992, accompanied by photos of a treasured set of cordial glasses the client hoped to store in the cabinet.
Krenov was, as always, more concerned with finding the right clients for his limited output than he was with receiving payment for his work. Where his contemporaries such as Wendell Castle were moving their prices into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars via fine art galleries and exhibitions (while also employing techniques and assistants that allowed for a much larger output from their studios), Krenov was still charging just a few thousand dollars for his pieces, each of which took him somewhere between two and five months to complete. As always, Krenov’s lack of financial drive was rooted not only in his principles but the regular, though modest, income from other sources. Where in Sweden he had been supported by Britta and the artist’s stipends from the Swedish government, in his later years his income from the books, his salary from the school and Britta’s pension from Sweden (which she continued receiving, having been careful not to lose her Swedish citizenship) sustained the Krenovs’ comfortable and small lifestyle. The Krenovs’ modest two-bedroom home on Forest Lane was not the manse that some of his contemporaries built for themselves in their retirement. Tina Krenov recalls having to help her parents rebuff a photographer who wanted to photograph their home for a book about the dwellings of artists. Tina found herself explaining that her parents’ home was not a showpiece but a modest arrangement that suited their quiet life.
After exclusively showing at Pritam & Eames through the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Krenov found a second gallery in which he showed some of his work in the late 1990s, a move precipitated by the hassle and risk of shipping his delicate work across the continent. In February 1997, Krenov delivered a lecture at the grand opening of Misugi Designs, a furniture gallery and Japanese tool and materials importer opened by Kayoko Kuroiwa in Berkeley. Kuroiwa had worked for a number of years as an importer of fine Japanese tools and hardware for Hida Tools, a store that Krenov had begun ordering his saws and chisels from decades earlier. The new gallery, not far from her former employer, was intended as a hybrid space of sorts, one that both catered to a clientele of woodworkers with goods from Japan but also displayed the work of Northern California craftspeople. Krenov’s presence at the opening served to drive a significant amount of attention to the gallery when it opened, and attendance at the opening was significant. But Ejler Hjorth-Westh noted that the attendees were largely woodworkers and craftspeople, and not necessarily the wider public audience that could support the gallery aspect of the store.
One of the last of Krenov’s cabinets that focused on parquetry composition, completed in July 1999. This cabinet revisited his 1993 “Walnut Parquetry” cabinet [at the top of this excerpt], this time with a different board with less contrasting grain. The resulting graphics dictated a new layout and resulted in a different effect than the earlier piece. Photo by David Welter.
In the first year of showing furniture, Misugi Designs featured the work of several of Krenov’s students from the school. Hjorth-Westh noted that Kuroiwa was enamored with the work being done at the school, and saw “an almost spiritual connection with the Japanese philosophy of simplicity,” which Hjorth-Westh noted was also apparent in much of the Scandinavian furniture by which Krenov had been deeply influenced. Hjorth-Westh and a number of other recent graduates from Krenov’s school were in the opening show, and continued to show their work at the gallery in the next several years. Krenov sold the first piece he exhibited in the show, his last glass-door showcase cabinet, soon after the opening. This sale was, however, to one of his students, and the gallery’s effectiveness was impacted by a lack of promotion and publicity.
Misugi Designs operated for a decade after its opening in 1997, but its business shifted to selling Japanese hardware, materials and tools early in the 2000s. Krenov’s relationship with the gallery was short-lived. He never completely cut off his relationship with Pritam & Eames, and after showing a few pieces in Misugi he moved to largely selling his work that didn’t go to Pritam & Eames more directly, to visiting customers and friends.
Through his time at the school, Krenov often championed and featured the work of his students in lectures and presentations outside the community. Alan Peters noted that when Krenov presented in London, his slides had included a significant number of student pieces. A record of his presentation in Japan notes that his lecture focused “primarily on his students’ fine works.” He was also an advocate for his students’ work to be shown alongside his own. Krenov’s aim for the program was not designed to prepare students for a career, but starting in the 1990s, he began hoping to be able to connect his students with an appreciative public.
A pair of Ejler Hjorth-Westh’s chairs in the showroom of Misugi Designs. Several students showed their work at Misugi while it functioned as a gallery, though Hjorth-Westh noted that, early on, it seemed the gallery was having trouble attracting the right clientele. Photo by Glenn Gordon.
“I worry about these young people,” Krenov told Bebe and Warren Johnson in 1991. “I have this one last task: to build a bridge between fine workmanship done by generous, sincere, and responsible people who have a sense of adventure in their work, and the relatively small but very durable public that must be out there.”
On top of Krenov’s promotion of student work, in 2000 he had a chance to lend his writing to a student from 15 years earlier. David Finck, a student from the classes of ’85 and ’86, published “Making & Mastering Wood Planes,” which expanded on Krenov’s own approach to making his now-signature style of handplane. Krenov lent his own effort to the book’s publication, writing a short foreword to the book that detailed his decades of experience with making and adapting the tool to his approach. While the book was not Krenov’s, it served as another indication of a more material influence of his on the craft: the self-sufficiency and sensitivity that came with the creation of one’s own tools. Krenov’s approach to making the planes had always been, in his eyes, a first step in a sensitive approach to woodworking.
A recent plane made by David Finck, with a high bed angle aimed at tackling difficult grain, like those in violin fingerboards. Finck largely works as a luthier, though he continues to make and use wooden planes in Krenov’s style, which he described in his book. Photo by David Finck.
“Really, my simple message is that if you’re going to approach woodworking with sensitivity and maybe refinement, planes are a good way to begin,” Krenov wrote in his foreword. “They’re a start to improving the rest of your tools that need improving. After all, the hand plane is the first part of the woodworker’s aria. And what I’d like to see happen, through this book that David has written, is for you to make a plane or planes that will, in turn, make fine music.”
Figure 9.1: Krenov (right) and Malmsten (left) examine a scale model in Malmsten’s design office in Stockholm.
Books are born in many different places. This one was born in a bar.
Brendan Gaffney and I were were having a drink at the Old Kentucky Bourbon Bar up the road, and we got on the subject of James Krenov. Brendan had attended The College of the Redwoods (now The Krenov School), but he wasn’t much like any of the other graduates I had met. Brendan admired Krenov, but he didn’t attend the school to walk in the master’s footsteps.
Brendan also attended the school after Krenov’s death, so there was no personal connection between Brendan and Krenov, who was one of the 20th century’s most influential writers, speakers and woodworkers. Full stop.
“Why,” I asked, “has there never been a biography of Krenov? There’s actually little written about his life other than a few stories in his books.”
That conversation led to Brendan’s book “James Krenov: Leave Fingerprints.” It is the first and likely definitive biography of Krenov, and the story like an pulp adventure novel than an academic examination. Krenov’s life story spans three continents, from the wilds of Russia and China to Seattle, Alaska, Sweden and – finally – to the Mendocino Coast of Northern California, where his school now stands.
Through extensive interviews, journals, family documents and a whole host of photographs, Brendan traces Krenov’s entire life. And, more importantly, gives us a balanced and fully formed view of a man that some worship and others malign or dismiss.
Even if you have only a passing familiarity with Krenov, I think you will find “Fingerprints” relentlessly engaging. Krenov’s journey from Russia to one of the most important woodworkers is simply incredible.
— Christopher Schwarz
Learning Furniture Making at Carl Malmsten’s School
Despite his enthusiasm and passion to attend, Krenov’s admission into the Verkstadsskola [furniture school founded by Carl Malmsten] was not immediate. Krenov had been suffering in the factories of Stockholm and was primed for the rigor of Malmsten’s furniture school, but there was a requirement for prior woodworking experience, which his experiences in boatbuilding and wilderness handcraft did not fulfill in the eyes of the old master. In addition to that lack of prerequisite experience, Krenov was already in his late 30s, much older than the other students of the school. From a partial registry of students from Krenov’s years of attendance, he was the oldest student in his cohort by 11 years.
But in his own words in his interview with Oscar Fitzgerald, “I went up to the school and just wouldn’t go away. So they let me in just to get rid of me really, and I studied there.” After meeting with Malmsten in person at his storefront in Stockholm to discuss his entry and to lobby for his admission, he was accepted into the program.
Figure 9.5: Krenov at work on one of Carl Malmsten’s desk designs from the 1940s, the “Nefertiti” desk. The desk’s elaborate marquetry required technical skill and a time-intensive finishing process – and lots of sanding and scraping, as Krenov is shown doing above. Photos courtesy of the Krenov family.
Krenov’s two years at the school revolved around learning both machine and hand production of woodworking and rigorous design practices. The students were under the supervision of Georg Bolin, the lead teacher at the school who had encouraged Krenov, after their first meeting, to hang around. Bolin was himself a musical instrument designer and luthier, a career he came to after an initial training in Malmsten’s first classes. His position as head teacher is indicative of the eccentricity of the school’s environment. Bolin personally advocated for Krenov’s admission to the school, and in later years, the two would remain friends and respectful colleagues.
The school’s curriculum was rigorous, and entailed a six-day workweek aimed at a rounded and intense education of its students. For four days, the students built furniture from Malmsten’s drawings and designs at the workshop in Södermalm. Kjell Orrling, one of Krenov’s classmates from the school, remembers that the students’ furniture was either sold in Malmsten’s furniture store in Stockholm or given to his influential friends for their own homes; the students took no share of the payments in either case. In his recollections, Krenov decided early in his schooling that he wanted to work in a more holistic way, designing and executing his own work, rather than working from the designs of others or offloading his design work to other craftspeople.
“We had exercises where we were asked to design a coffee table or whatever, but you would never build it,” he related to Oscar Fitzgerald in his 2004 interview. “You just designed it and then it was discussed and if he didn’t like it, he’d throw it on the floor and stamp on it.”
Figure 9.8: Three photos taken by Kjell Orrling, one of Krenov’s classmates during his time at Malmsten’s school in Stockholm. On the left is Raimundo Estrems, Krenov’s close friend in the program whom he later recalled in “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook.” In the middle is Georg Bolin, the principal teacher at the school and a famous luthier, and on the right is Krenov, doweling a desktop to its frame. Photos courtesy of Kjell Orrling.
Krenov, decades later, critiqued the harsh top-down hierarchy of the school’s education, even teasing his professor’s stutter and mannerisms. But Malmsten’s philosophies, grounded in the Arts & Crafts movement and the elevation of folk designs, certainly shaped Krenov’s work in form, methodology and philosophy, and a connection to the Arts & Crafts style constituted a major influence through the rest of Krenov’s life.
One day a week, the students spent their day at one of Malmsten’s drafting and design workshops, studying the drawings and blueprints in production and rendering their own. And, on the sixth day of the week, the students reported to one of the many museums in Stockholm, where they were tasked with making scale drawings and plans for the pieces in the collection. At every stage, in the workshop, the design offices and the museums, Malmsten or Bolin were there, giving feedback to the students, holding their work to an almost unattainable standard. Negative critiques were delivered severely by Malmsten, and the complexity or quality of the projects and designs a given student made in the workshop were dependent on their meeting these standards.
Manne Idestrom, another one of Krenov’s cohorts from the school, remembers that the students were also often employed in manual tasks at Malmsten’s farm, just northeast of Stockholm. While the students trimmed hedges or dug potatoes, Malmsten used these days as an opportunity to lecture about his ideas of design and function, as informed by the natural world or simple work. This interest in the interplay between farm life, craft and old Swedish traditions would soon manifest in another school, Capellgården, which was established just a year after Krenov’s graduation. Orrling, too, remembers working for Malmsten outside of the school. He was younger than most entrants, just 17 years old in 1957, and he had to work as an assistant in the workshop and as an attendant in Malmsten’s downtown store before he was allowed entry to the Verkstadsskola.
Figure 9.10: One of the pieces Krenov made while in school, a coopered-door wall cabinet in Swedish fir. A number of these cabinets would constitute a large portion of Krenov’s first several years of work. Photo by Bengt Carlén.
Both Idestrom and Orrling remember Krenov as a novel, at times odd, member of the class. For the first six months, according to Orrling, Krenov barely interacted with his fellow students, in part because his Swedish language skills were still maturing, and due to the large age gap between himself and his classmates. He was also an oddity in Stockholm at large – his preference in personal style (corduroy clothes, neckerchief and beret) as well as his mannerisms made him stick out. In one anecdote, remembered by his daughter, Krenov’s appearance captured a surprised glance from the Princess Lilian of Sweden, whom he and Britta happened by on the street in Stockholm. Britta remembered him exclaiming to the princess and her company, “It’s not polite to stare, ladies!”
Krenov also had a penchant for reciting poetry and passages from books during the class lunches, a practice he enjoyed and would continue in his own lectures and classrooms decades later; but it put off some of his fellow students. In this way, he was perhaps quite similar to Malmsten.
“He would take 15 minutes to explain a blade of grass,” said Orrling.
But despite his oddity, after a few months Krenov’s devotion and technical prowess won the respect of his classmates and teachers, and both Orrling and Idestrom remember his abilities as noteworthy, surpassing the talents of some of his fellow students. Many of the students came to the school with pre-existing skills, but Krenov’s natural talent for the work was considerable, as were the long hours he spent after school in the workshop. Students were allowed to use the space in the evenings for their own work, and while some used this time to make simple wares for their own homes or to pursue other hobbies, Krenov worked hard on his own designs for cabinets or on his assigned projects. These after-hours pieces included his first wall cabinets, a candlestick (which caught the eye of Malmsten and led to his choosing Krenov for a piece that involved difficult carved panels) and a number of other small works that served to hone his skills and nurture his design practice outside of the prescribed designs of the school.
Figure 9.11: A photo of Krenov around the time of his graduation from Malmsten’s Verkstadsskola in 1959. The small sailboat on Krenov’s lapel pin shows that even a dozen years away from Seattle and his work with the boats had not suppressed his love of sailing. Photo courtesy of the Krenov family.
Years later, Krenov fondly wrote about one of his cohorts, Raimundo Estrems (whom Krenov called Ramón), a Spaniard whose background was in pre-industrial furniture construction and luthiery. Krenov was a witness at Ramón’s wedding, which took place during a lunch break one day during school; the students were hardly able to take a day off from their schooling, and even an event like a wedding had to be shoehorned into the school’s daily proceedings. It was Ramón who showed Krenov his wooden bodied planes and how he tuned and used them. This introduction, alongside an old Norwegian book he remembered reading in the office at the Malmsten school, were formative in Krenov’s adoption and championing of the wooden handplane as his preferred woodworking instrument. While in school, Krenov made his own handplane, looking to modify the ergonomics of the tool to a form he preferred. In subsequent years, Krenov would make hundreds of planes, and later referred to the tool as “the cabinetmaker’s violin,” indicative of his consideration that the tool was at the forefront of his approach and enjoyment of woodwork.
It is hard to overstate the school’s importance to Krenov’s career; many years later, his teaching and lecturing approach, in addition to his cabinetmaking practice, would be deeply shaped by Malmsten’s own approach. His charge against Malmsten, that he was an authoritarian or difficult teacher, would come back as a critique often levied against Krenov’s own approach to teaching, and his future blend of uncompromising and lofty ideals with technical education also came to mirror Malmsten’s.
“He was very strict – in one sense he was despotic,” Krenov remembered in 2004. “In another sense he was a purist in the sense that there was no compromise as to fine workmanship, as to a good eye, good hands – that sort of thing.”
James Krenov and several students mill lumber in the backyard of the Krenovs’ home in Fort Bragg. Milling lumber from logs with the Alaskan chainsaw mill, as Robert Sperber had done with Krenov a decade earlier, became a part of the school’s curriculum and is still taught each year. Photo courtesy of the Krenov family.
After these experiences at the other schools, it seems [James] Krenov’s relocation to California remained his central focus. When Krenov returned to Mendocino in 1980 for his longest engagement yet, he brought Britta, having already considered the area as a possible place to resettle and start a new life. The couple stayed in a renovated water tower in Mendocino, and used their time in the area to look for a new home. They found it just north of Fort Bragg on Forest Lane. Tina remembers her mother being thrilled at the palm tree in the front yard, an enticing embodiment of the exotic locale, far away from her native Sweden where she had lived up to that point. The Krenovs were also taken with the coastal environment – Krenov had always lived in cities and towns with an active maritime culture, and the presence of working boats in the Noyo harbor was a comfortable familiarity. During their first visits, the Krenovs began a practice of walking along the steep headlands along the coast, one they continued on a daily basis for the next 30 years.
Creighton Hoke, after returning to Richmond, Va., to pack up his tools and quit his cabinetmaking job, had moved back to Mendocino in hopes of attending the school that fall. He arrived just a few weeks after attending the workshop and was dismayed to find what he perceived to be little progress in the establishment of the school. Initially, Hoke took on a foreman position at Brian Lee’s millwork shop, hoping to use the skills he had developed as the lead in a cabinet shop in Richmond. This employment quickly fell through – Hoke was living on Lee’s land, in a tree house that had been built by Crispin Hollinshead on the rural property a few years earlier. And the workshop was, in his recollection, literally knee deep in shavings from the machines. Hoke left his position in Lee’s shop, and was looking for another opportunity, still driven by the hope that in a year’s time, he might be enrolled in the still-unrealized woodworking school under Krenov.
Under Lee’s organization and efforts, several craftspeople from the workshops and the community gathered to make a formal pitch to the College of the Redwoods administration in the fall of 1980. The administration was, by all accounts, enthusiastic about the proposition. The establishment of a woodworking school meant a boost in income for the community college system, which was paid based on student hours; a six-day intensive over nine months constituted a sizable number of credit hours. With Krenov at the helm, it would also bring national exposure to the otherwise locally focused school system. The pitch that the group made also noted that the program would be exceptionally rewarding for the local community’s craftspeople, as well. For that community, tying the program to the community college network would also drastically reduce the tuition for students – for California residents, the program would only cost $100 for the nine months.
A plan of the school, redrawn by David Welter in 1997. Image courtesy of the Krenov School.
After this proposal to the board in Fort Bragg, a second meeting was held on the main campus of the College of the Redwoods, 150 miles north in Eureka. At this second meeting, Hoke and Hollinshead, who had been central in the initial meetings, were joined by Bob Winn and Judy Brooks, members of the College of the Redwoods staff in Fort Bragg who had been on the board that heard their initial proposal. Winn and Brooks were early champions of the proposed program and central members of the community in Fort Bragg.
“The fact is that many of us were disconnected from the larger community, and had no real profile among our neighbors aside from breaking down in our pickup trucks downtown,” Hoke remembers. Winn, Michael Burns’s close friend, was an English and history teacher at the Fort Bragg campus and a persuasive voice from the school system and community in support of the school, a role he continued to play in subsequent years. Brooks, who would become a trustee in the College of the Redwoods school system, also lent her voice in support of the program, and developed a strong relationship with the woodworking program. Both advocated for the promise of the woodworking program, and all were excited to find that the administration at the college was already on board with the plan.
After this positive meeting with the administration in Eureka, the program was approved, and a part-time position to prepare and execute the plans for the school was created. Where Brian Lee had been instrumental in bringing the group together and providing the enthusiasm for the organization, the Guild took a back seat to some of the newcomers, especially Hoke and Burns, who were more driven in their specific hopes of working with Krenov. Lee would continue on as a driving force among the Guild and woodworking community, but a falling out with Krenov and disagreements with some of the newcomers led him to pull away from the school.
“Almost everyone – maybe everyone, in fact – would have gone right on doing whatever it was they were already doing, had it not been for the original, organizing energy of Brian Lee,” Hoke remembers. “There wouldn’t have been a Guild, or the workshops with Krenov. No ad in Fine Woodworking for me to see and respond to.”
Hoke took the part-time job with the college to set up the program, eager to find meaningful employment after his mismatch with Lee’s commercial business, and moved into an office at the Fort Bragg campus of the College of the Redwoods. A small piece of property was purchased at the eastern edge of town, behind the local school district’s bus barn, and construction of the facilities was underway by the end of 1980. During the next several months, Hoke worked with the school’s construction supervisors to design the school’s workshop, a daunting task that included everything from ordering materials, specifying the layout of the windows for the best natural light and ordering the machinery.
One of dozens of pages of invoices, requests and budgets that Creighton Hoke composed for the opening of the school in 1980. Image courtesy of the Krenov School.
Gary Church, a member of the Guild, was contracted to build the tool cabinets, made in the same manner as Krenov’s own tool cabinet in the workshop in Bromma. One of Krenov’s students from his first stint at RIT, Hunter Kariher, was contracted to build the 22 workbenches; it’s interesting to note that Kariher also built the workbenches for Wendell Castle’s workshop school a few years earlier. The benches were built in the same European style that Krenov himself used and were shipped from Kariher’s Rochester workshop to Fort Bragg that summer.
By his own account, Hoke was driven by the dream of attending the school, but the task laid before him was far from simple. Krenov, over the phone, was a demanding presence, and threatened Hoke that he may not make the planned resettlement if the school wasn’t properly equipped. Krenov’s demands were informed by the ill-fated arrangements he had encountered at his prior engagements with RIT and BU, where he had found the facilities inadequate or the demands on him as a teacher either unfair or ill-informed. His exacting requirements were likely motivated by a hope that this last engagement would be a good fit.
That Christmas, Hoke and Burns worked together to lay out the building plan on graph paper on the kitchen table of Burns’s family’s home. Burns, whose experience in the trades and homebuilding, complemented Hoke’s now-nuanced understanding of Krenov’s expectations, and in the course of a day, the layout was finalized. Hoke worked closely with Larry Kavanaugh, the school’s director, to put these plans into place, and the two of them ordered the machinery and supplies for the program, specifying everything from window shades to lumber racks to the particular style of fluted dowel Krenov preferred. Kavanaugh, who became a close friend and advocate of Krenov’s in subsequent years, worked closely with Hoke through the process, and the purchase lists for equipment and materials show that the school was sparing little expense in equipping the workshop.
Hoke was also tasked with outlining a curriculum for the program – while the basic understanding among those involved was to simply follow Krenov’s lead, the administration required a detailed plan for the 1,728 credit hours that constituted the nine-month program. Here again, Hoke interpolated from Krenov’s books, and consulted with their author over the phone form a structured plan for the year.
One of the last, if not the last, photos of Krenov in his basement shop in Bromma. Two of his cabinets are visible on his bench in the background of the photo, and his “Writing Table of Italian Walnut” is in the foreground. The photo illustrates Krenov’s preferred surface treatment for such a piece; the luster of the waxed tabletop illustrates his preference for satin surfaces. Many of the wall cabinets he made earlier in the 1970s and late 1960s were left completely untreated. Photo by Rolf Salomonsson.
This process was a daunting one for Hoke, and over the course of the year a tradition developed that continued into the school’s weekly rituals. Michael Burns, who was helping Hoke develop the program and work with Krenov to build out the home he had bought the prior summer, arrived at his office to pull him away for therapeutic drinks outside a local liquor store. The beverage of choice was Carlsberg Elephants, a malt-liquor from the Danish brewery, and the “Elephants” meetings continued as a ritual on Friday evenings. The meetings began as a small group of the school’s community, who circled up their cars outside the Sprouse-Reitz variety store downtown. In later years, the meetings moved to the “North O’ Town” industrial park, where a small satellite shop was set up by the school’s faculty and students, and by the late 1980s, it finally relocated to the school, becoming a weekly get-together for the students and the extended community of alumni, supporters and family members growing in the area. After its informal beginnings in the parking lot, Krenov began attending the gatherings with Britta, and it was especially Britta’s constant presence that students remember. During the next several decades, Britta would only miss a handful of “Elephants.”
