Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers Summer Show

The Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers invites you to attend a special exhibition titled “A Step Beyond: Collaboration and Innovation, New Work from the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers”, to be held at the Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts, at 135 Church St. in Burlington, Vermont, from July 9th - 18th. An opening reception will be held on Friday, July 9th, from 5:00 - 8:30 p.m.

This show will feature collaborative work by some of the guild members who have
collaborated with other Vermont craft artists, incorporating materials like forged steel,mica, stained glass, carved slate, and LED lighting. It will also include pieces with newprocesses, approaches and techniques that are innovative to the individual makers. This show is part of the statewide "State of Craft" exhibits throughout the year, sponsored by the Vermont Crafts Council to mark their 20th Anniversary. The show will bring to Burlington the work of professional level fine furniture makers from every region of the state, and is the first time the Guild has held a major gallery show like this in Burlington.

For more information about the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers visit VermontFurnitureMakers.com

The above info is from a Guild Press release regarding a furniture show that opened in Burlington last night. The space is on Church Street in the Firehouse Gallery next to City Hall. It's a wonderful venue and it looks like the members who are exhibiting stepped up to the plate for this one .... Check it out if you find yourself in Burlington ... It runs through next Sunday ...While you're here, also check out the New Guild Website at the link above. Click the photos below to enlarge them ....
Set up was yesterday and the organizers Johns Congdon, Lars Larrson and Dave Hurwitz really had their act together ... The show, just before the first visitor ... The turnout was amazing and went on until I left at 8:00 ...
We're exhibiting "Bethlehem Steel #3" and a set of six contemporary ladderback chairs. That's Bob Gasperetti's tapered piece in the background ....A detail of Johns Congdon's sideboard, which he designed in collaboration with his wife. This is the back side of the piece ... On the other side there are 5 drawers with handmade silver hardware ...A detail of Erin Handley's pear woodside table A detail shot of Mario Messina's hanging lamp
The gallery on Church Street ...

'Story Board'

The Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers Show opens tonight at Gallery 2, Vermont Artisans Designs, in Brattleboro. (See previous post) ... The piece I made for that show has an interesting story that goes with it .. When they originally cut the Northwest Coastal forests in the late 1800s, a lot of the trees had bark so thick that they had to cut them way off the ground using springboards that they notched into the lower sections. Looks like fun. I bought a slab from Berkshire Products about 4 years ago that was cut by a harvester who was going back into the woods, cutting the stumps, and sawing them up into boards ..... The redwood pretty much lasts forever, but you can see evidence of the 100+ years of exposure on the one end of the plank. For this piece we left it. For the other piece of the plank that I used to make the coffee table shown below, I trimmed the live edge and cut most of the discolored wood off. While I was making that piece, we counted the growth rings that you can see in th eclose up (484 in the coffe table) and again when we made th console ( another 177) so the part of the stump where the plank we got came from had over 650 years of growth before it was cut.....Kind of humbling .... Anyway, the table is part of our new metal leg series. The tables all bolts together and are extremely rigid for tables with such delicate looking legs .... Click the pictures to enlarge them and enjoy your tour of a remarkable board ....

At the show

A less dramatic photo ... Lots of fine art too ..

First couple passes of the smoothing plane

The coffee table I made with Sam a couple of years ago

The new table slab juxtaposed with the coffee table top showing the width of the original slab

Close up of the growth rings

In process mockup
Save a tree ... use recycled wood

Guild Furniture Show Starts Friday

The Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers will be opening it's Second Annual Show at Vermont Artisans Designs Gallery 2, 106 Main Street, Brattleboro, Vermont this Friday . There will be a reception this Friday from 5:30 to 8:00 at the gallery. Fifteen members of the Guild will be participating. I took these snapshots of some of the pieces that were already set up when I was unloading my curly redwood console table last Saturday. More picture to follow after the opening...Stop in if you're in the Brattleboro area .... Click the photos to enlarge them ..

A list of the participants and a top view of my curly redwood table

A less dramatic front view

Bill Laberge's Arts and Crafts cherry desk

Steve Holman's tv cabinet and one of Mario Messina's lamps

A Macassar ebony cabinet by Johns Congdon

A mahogany bed by Bill LaBerge
LOTS more to see at the show ...

The Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers Blog

Ok all you woodworker readers ... here comes something new. The Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers is in the process of launching a blog. There are 29 members and we'll all get our own day to write a post so there (hopefully) will be some new content every day. It will take a minute to get it under way but once we get the hang of it, it should be pretty interesting. you can check out their blog here now and if there isn't much up yet, sign up for the rss feed and actually watch it as it happens ... 29 furnituremakers, 29 styles, 29 viewpoints, tips and techniques ... look out Fine Woodworking ....

Animal Rhythms

'Animal Rhythms' floor stand mockup

This coming weekend (September 28th and 29th) is the annual Vermont Fine Furniture and Woodworking Show at the Woodstock High School. This year, in conjunction with the show there will be a furniture design contest at the Forest Festival Weekend at the Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historic Site in Woodstock. The high school will showcase work by individual Vermont furnituremakers as well as a group Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers booth. There will also be demonsrations and talks by some of the guild members, myself included. I'll be talking about the value of adding personalized inlay to your furniture. I will be exhibiting furniture and a portfolio at the Guild booth as well as at the Design Contest at the Marsh Billings Center. I have enetered one of my lounge chairs and also a sculpture I recently made, 'Animal Rhythms' in the design contest.

Four views ... sunlight and shadows moving. The pieces also swivel on their respective wall brackets.

The sculpture is something I created for Open Studio weekend in May after staring at the unpainted pieces in my office for quite a while. People seem to like it and, while this is the original version, I have made a smaller bedroom size copy for a New York client and recently received an order for an outdoor version in painted steel ... I'll be showing it as a floor mounted piece at the show ... the Guild booth is shown below

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Click to enlarge ... The wood burnings on the back wall are also mine

One of my lounge chairs

I've sold a bunch of these chairs and have them scatered throughout my office and home. I find them the perfect reading, lounging, meeting and napping and beer drinking chair. We make a solid mahogany version as well as a less expensive composite version.