I made a chair sometime back that will be documented in the chair build section of my forthcoming book, “The Life & Work of John Brown.” Apart from my use of a battery-powered drill, it is pretty true to how I was taught by John Brown. I have kept this chair for the sometime, but alas it has found a fine new home close to where I live.
The hunt was on for a suitable location to photograph it for the book. Heather Birnie, the photographer, and I visited a few properties and settled on a wonderful local Welsh farmhouse. The owners already own two of my chairs and were happy to help. They also run a gin distillery at the farm, Jin Talog. I also had a trump card up my sleeve. I had been offered to borrow what is reputed to be the last chair that John Brown ever made.
This made the day a special one, as I hadn’t seen that chair since 2002. The scalloping of the comb had a memorable story behind it as we both had an adventure a year earlier where we got to see an 18th-century Welsh stick chair chair with a similar detail. JB was inspired to replicate the detail in his own way. John Brown had strangely forgotten to chamfer the ends of the legs – one had chipped whilst dragged across the floor. It was a quick fix, and I gave it a coat of wax polish. It’s a fine chair that sits well and comfortable. I felt honoured to spend a few days with his last ever chair.
A craftsman whose work I have long admired recently mentioned that he’d noticed lots of kitchens in my Instagram feed and asked whether I enjoy the work or just do it to pay the bills.
“A friend in advertising gave me this advice,” he continued. “’Only show what you want to sell,’ so I have no kitchen photos, and slowly transitioned entirely into furniture.”
My answer to his question: I do enjoy building kitchens—in fact, I love it—and I do it to pay the bills. It’s because I have bills to pay that I’ve cultivated the ability to make my work lovable.
I am one of those people who thrive on necessity. Were I independently wealthy, I would likely vacillate between paralyzing depression and the kind of perfectionism that prevents some of us from completing anything. Like the strictest teachers, necessity is my ally as well as my taskmaster.
This corner is nearly done. This 16″-deep cabinet will stand across from the fridge, so it will hold the kinds of things used for storing food (storage containers, food bags, wrapping materials) and function as a tea and coffee making area, with a drawer for boxes of tea, coffee filters, etc. The marble counter will have a tiled backsplash and integral lighting. The shelf above will house the microwave (we discussed whether it should be out or behind doors; given the way this family uses the kitchen, the decision was to leave it in the open, as this corner is not visible from the dining room). The cabinet is still waiting for trim at the ceiling, door and drawer pulls, and paint.
“I hated working outside the shop,” the long-admired craftsman added by way of elaboration. “Invariably there was always a tool I’d forgotten, and I detested working on my knees. Also dealing with crooked walls, sloping floors, and supervising customers.”
My knees and I can relate to all of this (especially at my own age of 59, when I am receiving unsolicited mail from purveyors of hearing aids).
Working on a jobsite takes you into a realm where you are not in charge. It’s like captaining a sailboat on the Great Lakes. You have to roll with what comes, whether that means scribing cabinets to a madly sloping floor/wall/ceiling, improvising in the tool department, or responding to a customer’s comment out of left field. (My favorite example of the latter comes from Ben Sturbaum of Golden Hands Construction, one of the wittiest carpenters I know, who answered a French customer’s criticism of his kitchen trim installation with “Do not judge my soufflé before it is finished.”)
Remodeling a kitchen is a hefty proposition at the best of times. On almost every job, there comes a point where I wonder why I take on such work. To continue the comparison with sailing, it’s that moment when the captain props her eyes open with toothpicks to enable an all-night traverse across the vastness before an approaching storm. Between the sheer scale of most kitchen jobs, the centrality of the kitchen to the customers’ daily life–you will be held responsible for the inconvenience of dishwashing in the bathtub, as well as for the fine layer of dust that inevitably circulates around the house, even with excellent dust barriers, though I wonder how much of that dust simply results from the cessation of house cleaning while a major remodel is underway–and the out-of-your-shop/comfort-zone reality of installing and trimming out built-ins, building a kitchen is an odyssey in the truest sense of that word. It will challenge your patience, your improvisational abilities, and maybe most importantly, your capacity for bending your will to necessity.
And that’s exactly what I love—though I should add that I love it partly because I don’t do kitchens all the time but intersperse them with freestanding furniture, design, teaching, and writing. The variety keeps me sane. I know this because I spent many years building furniture and cabinetry without the respite of writing and design.
Notched around the cased opening between kitchen and dining room, this birch counter is finished to match the house’s original trim.
But even more than the challenges of kitchen work, I love the opportunity kitchens offer to work with context. I’ll save that for next time.–Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work.
For a detailed look at some of the decisions that went into this kitchen’s design, click here.
The Little House, our first structure on the farm.
I’ve never pushed woodworking on my daughters. My shop door has always been open to my family, and I’m happy when they elect to hang out there or even help a bit. Perhaps I’m making a serious mistake, but I cannot bear to impose even the most basic skills upon them – sharpening, sawing, drilling, planing, whatever.
Though I know these skills would serve them well, I fear I would inadvertently drag them into the deepest end of my personal obsession. I know this because I have been there, gasping for breath and trying to simply tread water.
Shortly after our family moved to Arkansas in the early 1970s, my parents bought an 84-acre farm outside Hackett on Hill Top Lane. The plan was to design and build a gorgeous home with our own hands and move there, away from the city. We’d raise strawberries in the farm’s bottomland. My mom promised me I could raise goats.
The nice part about this plan was my parents bought a drafting table and a huge quantity of books on carpentry, architecture, hand tools and folkways. I was interested in all of these things and devoured everything I could about water witching, saw sharpening and Prairie-style architecture.
The miserable part of the job was the work itself. My first memory of our farm was digging post holes for the so-called “Little House,” our family’s first foray into Early Rural Hippie Architecture. The foundation was made of reclaimed telephone poles that needed to sit on footers below the frost line. So into the holes we went with tiny spades.
I know this isn’t true, but I felt like we spent almost every weekend at the farm, installing a compost toilet, nailing on decking boards, digging fence post holes, startling the local turkeys and armadillos.
The Big House, early on in its construction.
Construction took years. I was probably about eight or nine years old when it began, and by the time I was in junior high we started on the “Big House.” This was an enormous structure with a greenhouse, a huge kitchen for my mom and a beautiful two-story stone chimney. The kids would have their own part of the house, separate from the adults. There would be sleeping porches and a gorgeous view of the Boston Mountains.
By this time my sisters and I were far more interested in our friends than working outside without air conditioning. We resisted every effort to drag us to the farm on the weekends. And eventually my parents relented. My dad continued to work there almost every weekend (as far as I can remember) until my parents divorced when I was 21.
Working on the farm made a deep mark on me. It compelled me to escape Arkansas for the city (I chose Chicago) and do something with my brain instead of my hands and my back. While in college, people asked me what it was like growing up in Arkansas. I would reply: “Just watch the movie ‘Mosquito Coast.’ I consider it a documentary.”
But here’s the funny thing: Three years after graduating from journalism school, I was taking a night course in furniture making. I had set up shop on our back porch in Lexington, Ky. I was reading Fine Woodworking magazine and was back to drowning myself on books on furniture, architecture and mountain craft. In 1996, I sealed my fate by taking a job with Popular Woodworking magazine.
Sometimes I don’t know if I should thank my father (now deceased) or what. It’s complicated.
So I decided to let my daughters find their own way. They know what handmade furniture is like, and they genuinely appreciate it – our house is filled with the stuff. And my shop door is still open to them if they ever decide to stick a toe into this giant lake.
But I’m just not strong enough, willful enough or obsessed enough to push them in.
Madeline’s last batch of stickers sold out so fast it made her head spin. That batch is out in the mail now, and we have ordered a second batch (same designs) that will arrive shortly.
So if you would like a set of these stickers, order them now from her Etsy store. If you order this week, there’s a very good chance they will arrive before Christmas – though we have no sway over the USPS mail carriers.
The good news: She ships these things worldwide. The bad news: She had to increase the price of a set by $1 because Etsy has increased its listing fees. Sorry about that.
Maybe I’ll even get a set of these (that’s how fast they sold out).
It began with a walnut desk that had been commissioned by a London architect friend. This was a prestige job for a building conversion in London’s Covent Garden. It was right on the Piazza – a prime spot. My desk was to fit diagonally across the reception area. Malcolm and I worked and worked to get this spot-on. Table delivered, everyone delighted, craftsmen paid.
A few weeks later I get a call: “The building has been sold. The new owners don’t want your table, so it has been taken by the managing director of the developing company for his Dorset house. We suggest you get in touch with Derek’s wife, Mary.”
WHAAAAT!!!!…. I hated this. Malcolm and I had made this table for a specific place in the centre of London. Now it was going into some rich dude’s country house – a disaster I sulked over for days. It turned into something unexpected.
Getting hold of Mary Parkes was not easy, and I didn’t really want to do it. Making the phone call took me ages. When I did talk to her it was, “Oh I love your table! We are restoring a house in Dorset and we have put it there. We need some special dining furniture. Can you help us?”
I remember feeling extremely scared before I met Mary. I went trembling to a very smart address just off the Kings Road in West London. I came with some draft ideas of chairs and tables. Derek arrived later; he was genial and friendly and very much the worse for a few drinks. We settled nothing but agreed to meet at their Dorset house sometime later.
When we met again, Derek was on great form. He spent a whole morning showing me around a wonderful old house. He proudly showed me some of the restoration work. It was incredibly expensive but almost invisible. Derek took great pride and pleasure in what he was able to do to restore that beautiful old house. He introduced me to the gardeners and household staff; he knew each by name and knew about their families and children. This man was operating socially on a completely different plane to the rest of us. To me, he was amazing; I was bowled over. He liked making things, and enabling things to be made.
Mary and I worked on her ideas. Derek wanted chairs in which he “could have a great dinner party, consume a bottle of claret and not damage himself falling out of the chair.” I remember Mary doing sketches of chair backs that I recognised from chairs in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. I picked that up and developed it.
We made a table in solid English cherry and a set of chairs. It was the biggest job I had ever done. I remember Malcolm and Neil sweating blood over it. Mary wanted holly and dyed blue veneer details to match her fabrics.
“We can do that,” I said with complete conviction and total ignorance. We would find a way.
We delivered the pieces, the bill was paid and the client was happy. I brought over my photographer, John Gollop, to take a shot of the pieces in location. John did that, then did something that was to me extraordinary. He picked up a chair, carried it into the next room and put it in front of a full-length window. There was a huge potted plant behind it. The photo he took changed everything.
Derek and Mary were happy if I made versions of their chairs. I thought I might make two or three. John’s photo and versions of it were in every glossy magazine for what seemed like months – the 1980s equivalent of going viral. It was an early confirmation of what furniture maker Garry Knox Bennett much later told me: “Dave, we are all in a giant photographic competition.”
We were making these damn chairs in various timbers for clients all over the country for the next few years. But more important, it told me that I could do this: I could talk with people, nice people, such as Mary and Derek Parkes, and come back with ideas for furniture that would make their homes better places to live. I could listen to what they wanted and translate that into an image that fitted them like a good suit of clothes.
Thankfully, I was a good listener; the stammer had taught me that. The first quality of a designer is to be a good listener, to take the brief and hear what is not always said. Then take the idea back to the workshop and make it. The making would be done without compromise; we would make as well as we could. Mary and Derek hadn’t quibbled over price; they wanted something special – something like the house they were living in, something new but worthy of the place. IKEA wouldn’t quite work here. The idea of “designing for clients” came directly from this job.
When I met Derek again nearly 30 years later, he was still at Blackdown House. His life has become a tribute to a wonderful English country house. We made another piece for the same room. I love that – do the job well enough and you will be working for a small group of clients for 40 years. They will always want you to make another piece.
