This is New Street today. Boyd’s house would have been on the right. Editor’s note: “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” by Whitney LB Miller is the true story of an incredible 19th-century furniture maker who fought for his freedom, invented a renowned (and patented) bed and helped many enslaved people escape to freedom. For the last …
I clock my screws, meaning I orient the slot in the screw heads so they are all vertical or horizontal. But I don’t think it’s a mark of superior aesthetics. It’s just something I do, like lining up the silverware on the dining table just so. I can’t help it. Some people who don’t clock …
The Peggy Shepherd Pottery Collection (at least, most of it) now lives in Nancy Hiller’s office. The whisk brush was made by Aspen Golann. After a small flurry of emails this past weekend related to the dust jacket in which Nancy, Christopher, Megan and I discussed word choice, the number of lines, the space between …
Connections Between Makers and Made Objects – Read More »
The following is excerpted from “Doormaking and Window-Making,” by anonymous. As the Industrial Revolution mechanized the jobs of the joiner – building doors and windows by hand – one anonymous joiner watched the traditional skills disappear and decided to do something about it. That joiner wrote two short illustrated booklets that explained how to build …
Venetian Windows, from ‘Doormaking and Window-Making’ – Read More »
Editor’s note: The chair chat you are about to read (or not, if you are scared of Canadian humor) this time features two unique chairs. Please note neither Chris, Rudy nor Klaus is related to the makers of these chairs. We don’t authenticate chairs – we just talk about what we like and don’t like …
Chair Chat No. 4 with Rudy and Klaus: Number One and Number Two – Read More »
Recently I finished up this green Irish armchair, and I’ve concluded it’s my best work yet. More than any other chair I’ve made, this chair gets closest to the intuitive style of chairmaking that I admire in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. How did this happen? It was 20 years of practice plus two frantic days …
I admit, I’ve chosen an easy bay for this Covington Mechanical Library post (it’s been a frantic – and slightly under the weather – week). Today, it’s the Foxfire series, volumes 1-12 (which is an almost complete set – I believe there are two additional anniversary editions). For those of you unfamiliar with the series, …
Covington Mechanical Library: Week 3 (Foxfire) – Read More »
As we near the home stretch on our forthcoming book about kitchens, we thought it would be fun to publish a series of posts about a kitchen remodel on which I’m now working. The first post sets the scene. Upcoming posts will discuss layout and aesthetic dimensions, the limited changes we’ll make to the space, …
The following is excerpted from “Doormaking and Window-making.” On the principle of beginning at the bottom, we will in the present chapter take in hand the making of the “ledge” door, and what comes next to it in simplicity – the “framed ledge” door. The former can be dismissed very shortly, the boards and ledges …
This past week I taught a class at the Wood and Shop School on building a Shaker candle stand for the first time. The table we made is pretty much a dead copy of one I measured a few years back at Hancock Shaker Village. photo by Joshua Farnsworth I was surprised at how well everyone …