Show Time

There's a show called "Out Of The Woods" opening Saturday at The Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester, Vermont. It will feature the works of 11 New England furniture makers included myself and fellow locals Bill Laberge and Steve Holman. The show has been a long time in the making and for a change we were one of the first to drop off our pieces so I'll be seeing all but one or two pieces for the first time myself on Saturday. There's a 'meet the artists' reception from 4 to 6 and their openings are always fine events. Happening at the same time will also be the opening celebration for the 81st Annual Members Exhibition, a sure to be interesting display of the members's fine art and sculpture work. Come by if you can ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

We'll be showing one of our Bethlehem Steel series pieces, a walnut and steel table and six complementary walnut chairs.
A close up of the plates Sam made to cover hardware 'wounds' in the 20" wide walnut boards.
A few photos from the SVAC website showing some of the other artists's work.
Steve Holman's sideboard ...
Close up of one of the bronze wood burl sculptures from the photo at the top ... Mother Nature is a pretty good sculptor too ...
There is also a very cool building on the site designed by the award wining architect, Hugh Newell Jacobson.

Bethlehem Steel .. Wood and Steel Tables

If I remember my family history correctly, my grandfather worked for Bethlehem Steel as a riveter for 52 years, starting when he was 13 in 1915, retiring at 65 in 1967, dead a year later. He worked on all the great bridges of the 20th century that Bethlehem Steel was involved in, which was most of them it seems ... I've been thinking of him as the boys and I have been creating a series of pieces, not custom, around the theme of metal and wood. We've sold a couple to clients passing through and we hope to sell these in the near future. The goal of this series is tell a story, highlight the (unusual) wood, and to build things efficiently and economically.
This is the beginning stage of the table above that we finished this week. The boards (20") were from a log of walnut I purchased from IrionLumber to make a pool table, a project that was, shortly after the boards arrived, canceled.
Two of the matching boards had a square cut out at the sawmill that obviously was to avoid sawing into a spike in the tree. Click the pictures to enlarge them ....
I went back and forth on what to put there, burl, little wood patterned inlays, but in the end, decided a couple textured, blackened steel plates would do the job. I can always change them later if inspiration strikes or if a client wants something personalized there ...
The boards were 10' long and we chopped two cracked crotch sections off the ends. (Not many people have a space for a 10', one piece table) This side table is 28" long x 20" wide x 24" high ...
All the photos in this post were taken in the (currently crowded) finish room and cut from their busy backgrounds with photoshop.


And then, we fnished the one board coffee table. Blow this up and check out the wood. When we made the dining table with the other part of this board, it was stained dark, which masked the various colors that are present in the natural wood ... 39.5 wide, 64 long and 17" high ...

On all these items, the phrase "Buy It Now" from Ebay applies. Pass it on ... Thanks ...