Don Mangus' "It Only Hurts When I Smirk.": woodworking

Showing posts with label woodworking. Show all posts

Saturday, June 9, 2018

George Nakashima

George Nakashima

Sunday, October 15, 2017

George Nakashima: Writing Chair

George Nakashima

The George Nakashima Woodworker Complex, located in New Hope, Pennsylvania, was the home of the internationally renowned furniture designer and architect George Nakashima. The 12-acre complex has 21 buildings, all designed by Nakashima. The assortment of buildings, scattered across a wooded forest and open lawns, served as Nakashima's home and workspace until his death in 1990. Nakashima is recognized as one of America's most eminent furniture designer-craftsman and his style of "Organic Naturalism" can be seen in the buildings, landscape, and furniture located in the George Nakashima Woodworker Complex.

Monday, October 9, 2017

Frank Lloyd Wright and Froebel Gifts

Friedrich Froebel

Frank Lloyd Wright

Friedrich Froebel

The "Prairie House building set" is based on the work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

His mother provided sets of Froebel Gifts (wood blocks) to him at an early age in the hopes that he might one day become an architect. Even as an adult, Wright often used the Froebel table grid as a work aid during the design process.

Wright’s work in the Prairie Style can be seen in his Robie House, Coonley House, and Dana House commissions. The Prairie Style features free-flowing interiors, low roofs, and horizontal profiles.

This set contains 68 blocks (plus the box and lid). The blocks are identical to Froebel Gifts blocks in size and material. An instruction sheet is provided with information on Wright and how to assemble the house design and put the blocks away.

Froebel Gift #1

Froebel Gift #2

Froebel Gift #3

Froebel Gift #4

Froebel Gift #5

Froebel Gift #5b

Froebel Gift #6

Froebel Gift #7

Froebel Gift #8

Froebel Gift #9

Froebel Gift

Froebel Gifts

Friday, September 1, 2017

Sam Maloof House

Sam Maloof

Master woodworker Sam Maloof and his carpenters designed and built a lovely, thoughtful home piece by piece in his on-site workshop -- no two door openings are the same here, and each joint is a wonder of craftsmanship. A MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient, Maloof has had his iconic rocking chairs shown at the Smithsonian -- he also designed the chairs that were used on-camera at the history-changing Nixon/Kennedy debates.

Visitors can see some of this furniture, as well as the wide-ranging collection of Arts-and-Craft pieces that he and his wife of 50 years, Alfreda, amassed together. The garden, which he tended, and the house are both open for tours -- if you ask, you might be able to peek into the workshop, where he continued building until his death in 2009 at the age of 93.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

J. B. Blunk

J. B. Blunk

J. B. Blunk was a sculptor known primarily for working in wood. After serving in the United States Army in Korea, he met sculptor Isamu Noguchi in Japan and served apprenticeships with Japanese potter Kitaoji Rosanjin and potter and Living National Treasure Toyo Kaneshige. Blunk was the first American to apprentice into the line of descent of that country’s great ceramic tradition.

After returning to the USA, Blunk was eventually able to build his own home and studio near Inverness, California. In 1962, Blunk started working in wood and was crafting furniture and installations out of redwood, which were unprecedented in their size and degree of abstraction.

Blunk graduated from UCLA, where he studied under Laura Andreson.

Monday, June 26, 2017

George Nakashima: Live-Edge Free-Form Wooden Table

George Nakashima

Born in Spokane, Washington, to Japanese immigrants, George Nakashima traveled widely after college, working and studying in Paris, Japan, and India, and at every stop he absorbed both Modernist and traditional design influences.

A turning point in Nakashima’s career development came in the United States in 1942, when he was placed in an internment camp for Asian-Americans in Idaho. There, Nakashima met a master woodcarver who tutored him in Japanese crafting techniques.

A former employer won Nakashima’s release and brought him to bucolic New Hope, Pennsylvania, where Nakashima set up a studio and worked for the rest of his life.

Nakashima’s singular aesthetic is best captured in his custom-made tables and benches -- pieces that show off the grain, burls and whorls in a plank of wood. He left the “free edge,” or natural contour, of the slab unplaned, and reinforced fissures in the wood with “butterfly” joints. Almost all Nakashima seating pieces have smooth, milled edges.

Nakashima also contracted with large-scale manufacturers to produce carefully supervised editions of his designs. Knoll has offered his “Straight Chair” -- a modern take on the spindle-backed Windsor chair -- since 1946. The now-defunct firm Widdicomb-Mueller issued the Shaker-inspired “Origins” collection in the 1950s.

In 1973 Nelson Rockefeller gave Nakashima his single largest commission -- a 200-piece suite for his suburban New York estate.

Today, Nakashima furniture is collected by both the staid and the fashionable -- his work sits in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as in the homes of Stephen Spielberg, Brad Pitt, Diane von Furstenberg, and the late Steve Jobs.