The woman who indulges in carpenter-work seldom does much harm. She contents herself with trying to drive nails into the wall, and with experiments with mucilage. She drives her nails with great caution, and when she has loosened an inch or two of plaster she becomes alarmed, and resolves to let her husband assume the responsibility of inflicting further injury on the wall.
She has a profound faith in the value of mucilage as a substitute for glue, and hopefully attempts to mend china and furniture with it; but mucilage is as harmless as it is inefficient, and it is only on the rare occasions when it is used to mend the wheels of the clock that it does any permanent injury to anything. (more…)
“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”
— Charlie Parker
“We believed punk rock existed through people like ATV and Mark Perry. He said, ‘Here’s a chord. Here’s another chord. Form a group.’ And we believed in the things that were being said. So, it became true.”
— Billy Childish, guitarist and vocalist for Thee Headcoats
During a recent trip to Seattle, my family and I spent a day at the Experience Music Project to see the exhibit on the band Nirvana and to take in the permanent and fantastic exhibit on the history of the electric guitar.
As my daughter Katy and I made our way through the Nirvana exhibit I was blown away by the T-shirts, posters, album covers and instruments that had been made by the musicians themselves in the Pacific Northwest’s punk scene. It reinforced something that I have long thought but have never expressed: Making furniture and making music is similar.
You can be establishment. You can be punk. Or you can be anywhere in between.
Me, I’m a more of a punk furniture maker. I have little interest in high-style pieces that were made for the ultra-rich – things that are elaborate and require immense technical skill. Yeah, I respect the hands and the training needed to carve a Newport shell or create a hunting scene in marquetry. But it has no connection to the way I live or my taste in objects.
I like three three chords. I like simple lines. I like music that was made without any hope of selling it to the masses. I like furniture that was made by unknown amateurs who made what they could with materials at hand and sometimes struck gold. I like music that was written, recorded, printed and distributed by the players. I like furniture that was designed, built, finished and used by its makers.
I like music that cannot be pegged to particular moment in pop history. I like furniture that could have been made in the 17th century or the 21st.
Where is this sort of furniture? It’s everywhere (outside of museums), and it’s invisible to most furniture historians.
Where do you find the plans for this furniture? You don’t. There really aren’t plans. This stuff is so basic and so animalistic that plans aren’t needed. But there are three chords. Three joints. A few basic tools. A few progressions.
I wish to enter a protest—“a kick,” as we say in the shop. I bought a magazine the other day, one of the dignified kind supposed to give a busy man a glimpse of some of the important things happening in the world, and to give it in a fair, open, unbiased way. In it I found an article at which I here kick.
It was one calling attention to a revival of certain kinds of skilled hand work whereby some people, with a good degree of skill and originality, are able to make wares that command a relatively large price because of the fact that they are made in small quantities and cannot be duplicated at the nearest store, the trade mark of the maker being the chief item of value as showing that the article is unique.
So far I have no reason to object, believing as I do that it is good business to work at that which brings in the best returns for the effort expended. What I do object to—and that most vigorously—is the insinuation that the every-day worker is below these in honesty and usefulness. (more…)
In New England a good workman is described as a “Master-hand at his trade.” Within the past few years a new and superior workman has appeared who is his own designer, skilled worker and dealer—in brief, his own employer. There are women also who are designers and workers and are their own saleswomen.
The upper West-side apartment district of New York may not appear to be the best place to find the shop of a Master-hand. A few steps from prosaic Columbus Avenue, on One hundred and Fourth Street, lead to a small brick dwelling. There is a high stoop and a large basement window and a few stone steps lead down to a lofty basement room having a fine north light. (more…)