As always, thanks for reading.

-Michael

The spring craft shows are rapidly approaching and I’ve begun working on a few new pieces in preparation. The first piece is a coffee table that I’m calling the Tarantella. I’d settled on the physical design for this piece well over a month ago, but I wasn’t quite sure what woods to use. I decided that the legs would be black, which for me usually means using ash, and I wanted a top that would contrast well and really make the piece pop. So, earlier this week I headed up to Highland Hardwoods thinking that either Bubinga or Bloodwood would work nicely. I prefer to visit Highland on weekday mornings when it’s not particularly crowded and I can take my time to explore their retail warehouse. As I’ve mentioned in this blog many times in the past, I always find something unexpected and often it follows me home.

As I climbed the stairs on my way towards the ‘exotics’ on the second floor, I passed a rack of three and four foot long shorts. Zebrawood, Tigerwood and a species that I’ve never worked with: Black Limba. I pulled a few of the shorts down from the rack and discovered this wood to be  light weight and a pale yellow in color, with wide streaks of dark brown and black in a pattern that makes it appear spalted. On the rack were about a dozen four foot long shorts, a perfect for the coffee table I had in mind, and I spent the next half hour, pulling all of the boards down, lining them up against the wall, and arranging them. It’s easy to select planks for a wide top or panel when the wood has long nondescript grain, and the color is fairly consistant. But with a figured wood, it becomes a bit more of a puzzle. The goal after all is to arrange the planks in a sequence that creates a visual harmony. At least that’s my goal. It’s time consuming, and often frustrating, but selecting the material is at least as important as what you do with it. I finally settled on three planks that I believed would be perfect for the top… but, of course I bought some Bubinga anyway.

Once home, I went through the usual exercise of flattening and smoothing the faces, jointing the edges and glue up. Not much interesting to report there. I will say though that the wood has a similar workability to Poplar. It’s light weight, with friendly grain that planes easily. There were a few small worm holes in every plank that I came across, and at first I had planned to fill them, but now that the panel is glued up, I think they’ll remain. I like the character that they add. For this piece, each of the four edges of the top are slightly bowed, so after sanding the glued panel smooth, I set about creating these curves. Once I was satisfied that the last of the sanding scratches had been removed, I applied the first coat of finish…

As always, thanks for reading.

-Michael

The Rocket Age Lighting Collection at Paradise City

Over Columbus Day weekend, I exhibited the entire Rocket Age Lighting collection at the Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, MA. I’d been preparing for this show for several months, but no matter how much time you have to prepare for a show, there’s always one last piece that’s not finished until the night before. It reminded me of cramming for a final exam. The last few days in my shop were pure madness,  and I left it in total disarray as I drove out to the show with the trailer loaded to near capacity. I was very fortunate to have a wonderful corner location, right next to the “Picture the Music” special exhibit, in which the Tango lamp was included. I also had the good fortune to be adjacent to double doors that led outside , which made setup and breakdown a lot easier. More importantly, when the afternoon temperature reached 85 on that Saturday afternoon, the breeze blowing through those doors was more than welcome.

Tables & Lamps

The reception that my work received was far better than I could have hoped, and frankly I was a bit shocked by the overall enthusiasm and energy in my little corner of the show. One of the most important pieces of feedback that I received at the show, was the need to make a large version of the Odessa lamp in black as well as other woods. Over the course of the show, several people stopped into the booth and asked, “can you scale this lamp up to that size?”, pointing towards the Cocktail lamp table in the corner. That was far and away the most requested item and I left the show with orders for one in black and a few in cherry. Work on those pieces began today and I’ll be delivering them to their new homes in a few weeks. Then, it’s off to the next show: The American Craft Show NYC at the Jacob Javits center in Manhattan, November 18th – 20th.

I will be returning to exhibit at both the Marlborough and Northampton shows this spring, and hopefully with a few new designs.

As always, thanks for reading

-Michael

It is trendy these days to ‘upcycle’, and many online storefronts are full of of reimagined-refinished-refurbished pieces that appeal to a vintage-loving, shabby-chic crowd. If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, or even if this is your first time browsing my collection, you probably realize that I’m not into that sort of thing. You will not find a chest made from rough re-cycled barn board in my collection — I have nothing against it, but it’s not my style. I will admit however that for several years, I’ve been collecting pieces of old furniture that have some element in which I see potential. It could be a nice leather top on an otherwise decrepit table, an oversized brass tray that may someday be the top for a modern sideboard, or  as in this case, a battered old drafting table that has some unique hardware.

For many years my aunt, an art teacher in NYC, had an old drafting table that she used as a desk in her studio. I remember that studio very well, but it wasn’t until the space was being cleared out that I noticed the table. All I had ever seem was the top of it nestled in a corner and surrounded by easels, canvasses, stacks of paper and printing supplies. To be honest, once it was finally revealed, there was nothing spectacular about it. If anything it was a bit of a let down, like the opening of Al Capone’s vault. It was oak, and it was ugly.  The only reason that I ended up taking it was that I needed a drafting table, didn’t have the time to make one and didn’t want to buy one. This is probably the same reason that she had it. So, it consumed space in the corner of my shop for a while, unused, because, as it turned out, I didn’t need a drafting table. Well, at least I hadn’t bought one.  As it sat there, though, I began to notice the hardware – the cast iron hand wheels, threaded rod and a some interesting cast parts holding it all together. These were used to raise, lower and tilt the top in a crude but effective manner.

The Original Drafting Table (after cleaning & polishing the lower hand wheel)

While I had no use for a drafting table for the purposes of drafting, I decided that I did need some kind of desk that I could break down and bring with me to shows. And, if I was going to be exhibiting Rocket Age Lighting, I needed something with a mid-century feel. With the Paradise City show literally five days away, the pressure was on to design and make something – and do it quickly. With the deadline looming, I broke down the old drafting table, discarded everything but the hardware and spent about an hour bead-blasting the parts in my sandblasting cabinet. The hand wheels were less than stellar, as the castings were really rough, but after a bit of sanding and buffing they looked great. Well, not necessarily great, but they had that worn, but cared for look that I wanted. Ultimately, I sprayed all of the cast parts flat black, including the hubs of the wheels, but I left the rims a natural satin.

As I was working on refinishing the hardware, the rest of the table began to take shape in my mind. This turned into a ‘design-as-you-go’ project, but the original piece offered a lot of guidance, and I decided to use the hardware exactly as it had been used in the original desk. I knew from the start the piece would be black, and I had a load of ash, so that was settled. All that really remained was to decide what to do about a top.  I had just finished a production run of Cyclone lamps, which use acrylic cylinders as a substrate for the shoji paper, so acrylic naturally came to mind… I finished this table at 5:30 PM on Thursday afternoon and by mid-afternoon on Friday, it was in my booth at Paradise City.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Michael

Shifting gears a bit though, much is being written these days about LEDs replacing incandescent bulbs. In fact,  The Future of Light Is the LED was the cover article on this month’s issue of Wired magazine and you can read it  here.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Michael

A view from the front

A three quarter view

A side view

As always, thanks for reading.

-Michael

One of the finished parts after final sanding

The two curved parts will be joined using a rosewood spline. Here the spline is being test fit

As always, thanks for reading.

-Michael

Cleaning up one edge of the laminated part on the jointer.

The bottoms of each part are trimmed to the proper angle with a jigsaw. They are then be cleaned up and planed square to the edge using a hand plane

The joinery for curved parts can be tricky. Here a special purpose jig was constructed to route a flat groove into the top of the arch

A template made from Italian bending plywood is used to transfer the shape to the part

After removing the bulk of the waste on the bandsaw, final shaping is done by hand.

The first coat of oil & varnish is applied to the rosewood.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Michael