Whenever my brother and I finish a project, we like to take a day or so to clean the shop and
consider our next project. This is one of my favorite times in the shop. As we sharpen our tools or maybe build some shop infrastructure like a sawhorse or shelving, we weigh our options. This act of organizing your thoughts, touching up your tools, and cleaning your workplace puts any craftsperson into a different mindset. Simply being in contact with the tools and the raw material of your craft has an inspirational aspect to it. Things seem very possible in this moment. Ideas become expansive, the cleaning and organizing becomes meditative, and many complex difficult things seem attainable, even simple. I imagine this ritual of preparation may be universal among crafts. And even outside of the craft world it is easy to discern the ritualistic acts that mark the beginnings (and ends) of many human endeavors: whether it is the saying of grace before a meal or checking to make sure your emergency brake is off and that you can see out of your rear view mirror before you drive somewhere--habitual, ritualistic actions guide people (knowingly or unknowingly) throughout their lives. My brother and I begin our craft by cleaning the shop, sharpening the tools, while we talk of the good work to be done next.
So what are we doing next? We have decided on a chest of drawers for the next furniture form to explore. This is exciting for me because despite it being one of my favorite furniture forms, my brother and I have never made one from our own designs.
We will be doing two things differently with this upcoming project. As I stated in an earlier post we will be posting work-in-progress (WIP) updates from now on. These won’t be step-by-step “DIY instructions.” Just a loose smattering of pictures of the project at various stages of construction with a few sentences of explanation.
We will be doing two things differently with this upcoming project. As I stated in an earlier post we will be posting work-in-progress (WIP) updates from now on. These won’t be step-by-step “DIY instructions.” Just a loose smattering of pictures of the project at various stages of construction with a few sentences of explanation.
The second difference is that we will be making two chests of drawers, one after the other. The first chest of drawers we plan on making will be meant for someone who would like to own something finely made but not overly complicated. It will be like a good loaf of bread, wholesome, basic, beautiful, accessible, even… democratic? It will be the sort of furniture that IKEA furniture is meant to be, but in every way isn’t. The second chest of drawers we make will be more like a fine pastry wrapped around something delicious, glazed, and then sprinkled with toasted almonds. It will also be fine and well made, and it will be elegant and decadent in the best sense of the word. It will be much more exhausting for us to build then the first chest. The simpler piece we will able to roughly recreate on demand at a set price for anyone who would like to own something fine and simple, while the more complicated piece must remain a one of a kind.
After these two chests of drawers we will continue doing other common furniture forms in this way, documenting each pair as they progress.
We will catalog our progress with each of these pieces. And we have already begun the simpler chest of drawers, in fact I am dovetailing the drawers today. Expect to see photos up soon.