We will be open for visitors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 26. We will be selling our full line of books and tools, of course, and we’ll be happy to answer your questions and talk about woodworking.
We have free Lost Art Press yardsticks and pencils (not the ones we sell) to give away – one to a visitor. And we also have some blemished books to sell at 50 percent off. Blemished books are cash only. Our storefront is at 837 Willard St., Covington, Ky. 41011
We ask that all visitors to our storefront be vaccinated as this building is also Chris’s home. We won’t ask if you’re vaccinated – it’s the honor system. (Please don’t troll us on this personal health decision.)
While you are visiting, you might grab lunch at The Standard on Main Street. On Saturdays they make some excellent barbecue (try the brisket). Also recommended: Crafts & Vines serves lunch on Saturdays – it’s always something tasty and usually smoked. Or if you want to be more adventurous, try Chako – a Japanese bakery and cafe. Or one of the other many fine restaurants within walking distance.
We’ve selected (by choosing random numbers and matching them up to the entrants in the order the emails came in) the winners of the Crucible Tool 5-year anniversary lump hammers engraved by Jen Bower, and the lucky 10 have been notified. Next week, these tools will be on the way to their new homes. (I’m awaiting shipping boxes and a plowed road to the post office.)
We’re also working on a new anniversary tool – one that is very dear to me – and hope to be able to say more about it shortly. Stay tuned!
Presentation drawing. Illustration by Richard Jones
In Chris’s blog post, “The 10 Worst Mistakes I Made as a Beginner,” one mistake he mentioned was “buying the hardware at the end.” I added a comment to his blog to say that when I was studying furniture design and making at college in the early 1980s, a visiting lecturer, and furniture designer and maker Rupert Williamson, cited the mantra, “Design from the handles back.” He added, “Nipping down to the hardware shop at the last moment to carelessly buy some pug ugly wooden knobs for the chest of drawers you’ve made is all wrong.”
I immediately thought, How obvious. Essentially, all Rupert was really saying was to consider carefully what the viewer first sees because that first look either draws the viewer in or repels them. Every other part of the design is important of course, including what’s not seen initially along with the technicalities of construction and the fulfillment of other design criteria whether they be aesthetic, practical, cost, material choices and so on. The first look evokes a reaction, e.g., “ooh nice,” “hmm?” or “eeyeuch!” leading to further examination, pausing and moving along.
Earlier in my career, an element of my production included designing furniture for display in galleries and furniture shows, and the cabinet used to illustrate this text is an example. Exhibition pieces project your design ability and style, generate commissions, and are themselves salable. The variation of the cabriole leg style used in this piece was the design motif that initiated the design development; this leg form had already featured in tables, chairs and beds but I wanted to see if it could be used successfully in a cabinet.
Designing for shows is both liberating and restricting; you can make anything you like, but will anyone else appreciate it? In this case, with just the leg form as a starting point, there were no pre-existing design constraints, apart from the piece potentially having appeal to categories such as homeowners, interior designers and so on. With speculative pieces, I find it helpful to invent a realistic end-use, perhaps a need of one’s own. Here I settled on “storage” as the vague generalised end function. This forced concentration on the storage role and discouraged flights of fancy which were filed in the “maybe for later” category.
General proportions, i.e., width, depth, plus incorporation of the cabriole leg profile were resolved first through a mixture of technical decisions and sketching. The early design development soon led to the decision that the cabinet would be a nest of drawers in a free-standing cabinet – drawers can always find a purpose. Technical decisions were required. How many drawers, and how should they move? Visible wooden drawer dividers between drawer fronts, or not? Proprietary drawer slides? Planted or integral drawer fronts? Exposed horizontal dividers visible between drawer fronts were ruled out to reduce the quantity of cluttered horizontal lines. Full-extension undermount metal drawer slides were chosen because they are quite inconspicuous and allow the drawer to fill most of the internal cabinet width; they also give full and clear access to the drawer box. There are always arguments for and against proprietary slides, but I concluded they were a good choice.
The cabriole leg form and the curves in it, long and sweeping below the shoulder, and above it short and tightly arced, informed other elements of the visual impact – for instance, the bottom 100mm or so of the leg’s inner face is also curved, as are the bottom edges of the lower front rail, and the bottom edge of the side panel. The top has a shallow bevel worked on the underside to show a slim edge, and the front edge is gently arced.
But what about the maxim to “design from the handles back?” This hadn’t been forgotten and I’d decided that proprietary pulls would be used rather than making wooden pulls. Several possibilities were considered with the eventual choice being a U-shaped bronzed pull that picks up the similar half U-shaped curve above the knee of the leg. The bronze colour worked well, in my judgement, with the chosen wood, i.e., the visible walnut and cherry. Alternative colours available for the pulls were black or bright chrome, which I rejected because the softer or mellow bronze worked subtly with the wood colours. As a side note, the drawer boxes were made of hard maple with maple veneered plywood drawer bottoms, primarily to present a clean and light interior.
View downwards of the cabinet drawer’s pulls.
Eventually, a presentation drawing was worked up, not drawn with meticulous care maybe, but good enough for me as the customer. This was followed by creating an orthographic projection, from which an estimate, a cutting list and hardware list were extracted. From there it was just a case of buying the materials and building the cabinet, which leads to another useful maxim: Never assume the hardware is available unless you have it in stock. I’ve known a few makers get into a bit of a pickle because they’ve built a piece thinking they’ll buy the chosen hardware at a later date, only to find, too late, that the selected item has been discontinued and no old stock is available.
Close-up of the top of the cabinet showing a drawer open.
Is all of the above the recipe for successful design development? I’d say not really, but it does highlight the usefulness of the “design from the handles back” maxim. As to what happened to the cabinet? Well, it was exhibited at shows and galleries for a few years but never found a buyer. It did, however, generate several orders because people spotted it, liked it, and commissioned me to make something either based on it or very different. So, it earned its money for me and eventually I retired it from its exhibiting role and found a place in my own home – its drawers are stuffed with all sorts of things, so yes, drawers do always find a use.
Multiple sources are reporting the sad news that Garry Knox Bennett, a giant in the furniture making world, has died. He was born in 1934 in Alameda, Calif. The following is excerpted from “The Difference Makers,” by Marc Adams (2019).
Garry Knox Bennett is an American icon in the field of woodworking. He studied painting and sculpture at the California College of Arts and Crafts and is a self-taught furniture maker living in Oakland, Calif. His trademark is the combined use of fine metalwork and woodworking. Garry’s work is in private collections as well as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C.; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City (formerly the American Craft Museum); the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the Oakland Museum of California; the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and more.
GREEN CAGE LAMP. This lamp is an example of the range of techniques, materials and shapes that comprise much of Garry’s work. Mixed materials, both found objects and re-purposed material, serve as a challenge to Garry to make everything work together successfully. Photo by AJ McLennan
A major retrospective of Garry’s work was initiated at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City (formerly the American Craft Museum) in January 2001, which included a showing at the Oakland Museum of California. The exhibition was documented with an extensive book on his work: “Made in Oakland: The Furniture of Garry Knox Bennett.” Garry has taught and lectured extensively in the U.S. as well as in Canada, Australia and the U.K. In 2004, he received the Award of Distinction from The Furniture Society and was honored as Fellow of the American Craft Council. In 2011, Garry received the James Renwick Alliance Master of the Medium award in Washington, D.C.
On the Professional Side After leaving the California College of Arts and Craft in 1960 to pursue painting and welded-steel sculpture, Garry found work in the Bay Area making sculptural light fixtures for homes and commercial buildings. Work was sporadic, however, and commissions from his paintings, sculptures and art shows were not enough to ensure a consistent income for his growing family. Garry searched for an avenue that would allow for a base income to enable him to focus on his art.
NECKLACE. In the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s Garry designed and made jewelry, both costume and fine. He set up a section at his company for lost-wax casting. Many of his designs were put into production. Making jewelry started with the peace symbol, which Garry mass-produced in the 1960s. He later set up both precious metal-casting and pewter-casting. A lot of the production jewelry was made utilizing a punch-press. Garry had specialized stamping tools made that could be used for this production work. The one-off precious metal work was Garry’s way of dealing with his frustration with not being able to work on his sculpture and painting at the time. He spent several years building a business and then returned to his studio full time, turning the business over to a partner. Photo by AJ McLennan
Garry and his lovely wife, Sylvia, had an opportunity to build a home and live in a rural setting on land owned by Garry’s ex-stepfather, a rice farmer in Lincoln, Calif. The plan was for this “rural living” to afford a modest livelihood as part-time property caretakers and part-time artist. On the outside it seemed an ideal way for Garry to grow in his work, but the reality was otherwise and they returned to the Bay Area after five years.
Still looking for that “thing” that would generate basic support, Garry discovered the next opportunity through friends who had a shop in Berkeley, Calif. They approached Garry about making some jewelry, primarily earrings. It was the 1960s and the beginning of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury “hippy” days – anything large and dangly with beads was hot! During this time, Garry designed and produced peace symbols, roach clips and assorted “hippy” accoutrements. His company, “Squirkenworks,” was started in 1965. Garry viewed himself as a commercial sculptor and artist who sold to both a wide counterculture market and an upscale clientele.
His choice of material was brass brazing-rod, which he had used in his sculpture. It was cheap and readily available. The work was a huge success and evolved into a major line of precious-metal jewelry, which was sold in stores across the U.S. Henri Bendel in New York City was a customer. The result was a stable income for many years, allowing Garry to retreat and focus on his personal work.When Richard Nixon outlawed drug paraphernalia in 1974, Squirkenworks ceased manufacturing, and the “Summer of Love” segued into the “Death of the Hippy.” An era was over. Garry, however, chose to expand the plating shop that he had set up for his production work and offer precious-metal plating to other manufacturers. The shop is still operating as Gold Seal Plating today.
TANSU CHEST WITH DRAWERS. This Tansu Chest with drawers has a painting covering the entire back side of the cabinet. The panels on the various drawer-fronts are Garry’s metal “electroprints,” a technique Garry developed utilizing multiple colors of plating applied to a metal surface and then treating and stabilizing those plating-colors, (gold, silver, nickel, copper and brass) with chemicals to add even more complex color. Producing both one-off prints and limited editions, this was a complicated process that took several years to develop and perfect. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree
Garry’s move to functional work was possibly initiated by his early light fixtures. One of his commissions was a fixture that started at a front door entry and traversed the entire home, following the ceiling through the living room and ending in the dining room – illuminating one of Garry’s paintings that the client owned. Initially he worked exclusively with metal, which included a series of metal clocks. His first series of functional work, Cloud Clocks (all metal), was exhibited at Gump’s, then a world-renowned fine and decorative arts gallery in San Francisco.
He gradually moved toward some very primitive wooden casework. At first his only woodworking equipment was an old table saw that he used when he built his first house on his ex-stepfather’s farm. Garry found cabinets intriguing and started making some simple and, according to Garry, “very crude by woodworking standards” cabinets with drawers that often incorporated elaborate light fixtures attached to the casework.
The rear-view of this chair shows the tension-bar Garry designed to “give” when a person leans back in the chair. There is a supportive “give” (with pressure) which allows for great comfort in prolonged sitting. Garry has used this back-rest torsion design on many of his chairs. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree
An old friend who had a gallery in San Francisco was about to open a new gallery for furniture and glass and asked whether Garry would be interested in exhibiting in a group furniture show. Although Garry didn’t consider himself a furniture maker, he was interested in being included. So he turned to a group of like-minded young furniture makers in his area to see what kind of work was being produced. Although the majority of work at the time was impressive, he noticed there seemed to be far more attention paid to intricate dovetails while overlooking some pretty basic design concepts. Most work lacked visual excitement, shape and color. The door was open for a California-style furniture earthquake.
RIETVELD REDUX (white chair with bead dangles). Part of the recent Chair Series, Rietveld Redux is another of Garry’s take-offs on a Rietveld design. Garry has always utilized beads in his work. In the 1960s he was given boxes of amazing old beads from all over the world by a friend who imported and supplied beads to the bead-focused “hippy” generation. This friend was moving to a new location and brought over all the old remnants and (literal) sweepings when he cleaned out the building he was in. Garry has used these beads as parts of drawer pulls, embellishments and all of the “dangle” elements in this chair and in his earlier African Chair series. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree
Noticing the extreme focus on joinery, fine wood and lots of dovetails by many of these makers, Garry decided to make a piece of furniture for this new gallery exhibition that was visually exciting. Garry said, “there is much more to making an interesting piece of furniture than just fancy wood and joinery.” He intentionally set out to show that an untrained person could execute reasonable joinery and make a special piece that can become more than the sum of its joints. His now-famous “Nail Cabinet” was born.
WING Z CHAIR. This chair was one of the first of the Z chairs Garry made. A takeoff on a classic Gerrit Rietveld chair, this chair is comfortable and strong. Garry made some crucial changes in the engineering of the original Z. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree
This piece was a reaction to the decree that “the wood is paramount.” For Garry, wood was one vehicle to an exciting visual outcome. Design, function and excitement were far more important to him than the fact that an exotic material was used. The “Nail Cabinet” was conceived as a statement. And, to be honest, Garry grossly underestimated the reaction in downtown San Francisco that it would generate. Many perceived it as an abomination and sacrilegious (to put it mildly). With the criticism came unexpected attention. The labels of renegade/Philistine etc., opened a door that Garry was ready to enter. From that point, Garry put painting and sculpture on the back burner and it was furniture full-speed ahead.
NAIL CABINET. The nail is a common 16 penny nail, bent and distressed, hammered into the finished door intentionally. After the nail was removed and stolen from an exhibition, Garry replaced it and then wired it to the door so it could not be easily removed again. Photos by M. Lee Fatherree
This little bit of notoriety enabled Garry to comfortably explore a divergent approach which he found to be exciting. After the “Nail Cabinet,” the public would not be shocked by what would follow. Coming from an art background, his base was composition, balance, design and visual excitement, all of which were missing from most of the furniture at the time. Garry moved beyond the “California roundover” (referencing the soft edges given to most of the work being done in the late 1970s on the west coast). He was able to produce quality work without the sophisticated skill and training of the east coast approach to furniture making.
NAIL CABINET IN CRATE. Several years ago, a film crew was doing a story on Garry and they wanted to see the nail cabinet, which he still owns. When he took the crew to where it was being stored after its return from an exhibition, they removed the front of the crate to film it. When Garry saw it sitting in its crate with just the front panel off he said, “Stop. That is how I want people to see it from now on.” (Garry has requested it be exhibited “in the crate” for any future exhibitions and it has so far.) Photos by M. Lee Fatherree
His life is unique in that his choices have been made by just following a thread that has allowed him to do exactly what he wants to do in his own fashion, which is not an easy task. Garry underplays the business of art, but it exists. It is the conscious act of embracing anything that will enable you to do what you wish in the manner you choose. He lives by a simple rule: Set up a challenge and then go for it; success or failure, the effort serves to expand one’s abilities.
OWL DESK. One of the last large desks Garry has made – spectacular wood. Painted elements on the backboard and inside the drawers (he often paints inside the drawers of his pieces) add striking detail. Illumination is built in. This desk also has file drawers and computer accommodations. Photos by M. Lee Fatherree
On the Personal Side I first contacted Garry about teaching at MASW in the late 1990s, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2005 that the dream became a reality. Garry agreed to do a workshop where students, along with Garry, would make a table that would be auctioned with proceeds split 50-50 between The Furniture Society and the Roger Cliffe Memorial Foundation. Made from walnut, the table featured a breadboard top with massive through-mortise-and-tenon joinery, which is typical of the GKB style. When completed, Garry and each student signed the underneath of the tabletop. The table sold for more than $10,000….
DANCING BANANA CLOCK. Utilizing found objects, this clock was part of another series that followed many years later with an exhibition at Peter Joseph Gallery in N.Y. Photo by M. Lee Fatherree
Garry likes to enjoy life to the fullest. He is witty, artful, funny, clever and maybe every now and then a little sinful. Seth Stem, professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), once told me that he invited Garry to be a guest lecturer at RISD. Somehow the story goes that Garry’s flight arrived very late and by the time he got to Seth’s house it was the middle of the night. Pounding on Seth’s door, Garry yelled, “Where’s the beer?” I’m not quite sure if that story is true (it might have been something harder than beer), but Seth warned me that having Garry teach at MASW might be an experience. Seth knows that I’m a straight shooter. I don’t drink, smoke, cuss, gamble, use drugs or any of that “sinful” stuff, and when Seth heard I had invited Garry to teach at MASW, he thought he better give me a heads-up.
VENUS OF WILLENDORF MEETS ALLY OOP. This desk/table is one of Garry’s favorites: very rough, direct and quick, his three preferred ways to work. Photos by M. Lee Fatherree
Although I had talked to Garry often, I never will forget the phone conversation we had before his first trip to MASW. The concern in his voice bordered somewhere between terrified and repentant. “Marc, before I come to Indiana I have just one question. Now Indiana, isn’t that one of those Bible Belt States?” He promised me that he would be on his best behavior. As it turns out, Garry was a true gentleman and was one of the most gracious, polite and wonderful instructors I have ever had. At the end of his first workshop I will never forget saying goodbye in my driveway. He took me to the side and told me what it meant to him to be a part of our program, then gave me a big brotherly hug and drove away – straight to the bar.
LITTLE TALL TABLE (with drawer). A recent piece that reflects many of the shapes and techniques Garry has utilized throughout the years. Saw-tooth drawer front, inlay on top (epoxy, wood, paint) with wedge-legs and the mixed materials utilized between the top and base. Photo by AJ McLennan
A reminder that you have until 5 p.m. Eastern today to indicate your interest in one of the 10 Crucible Tool five-year anniversary Lump Hammers, hand-engraved by Jennifer Bower. We received the finished hammers today, and my pictures don’t do them justice (no surprise, though, that Jenny’s work is gorgeous).
The hammers are $350 each plus the actual cost of shipping. If you’re interested – and haven’t already done so – send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com with the subject line: hammer (please do not send other email to that address; it won’t get read until our next drawing). In the email body, please include your name, phone number and mailing address. (U.S. only, I’m afraid.)
We’ll select the winners this evening or possibly tomorrow. The winners will each receive an invoice they can pay online, then we’ll send the hammers to their new homes next week.
