There is a special beauty in designs in which form follows function – whether it be the hull of a sailboat, or a spindle made to spin evenly and true and long, or a simple bowl. This design beauty is enhanced when the material is wood, a material that was and remains alive (if prepared correctly), warm and inviting, moving in response to the environment. Good design, beautiful design, integrates the life of the material in order to perfect its function, uses the grain and other characteristics of the wood to suit the work intended.

I have been gathering local woods all my life, wherever I have lived, and fashioning them into furniture and other useful items, including other tools. I air-dry that wood. I don’t steam the life out of it in a kiln. I live with the wood, sometimes for years, and let the pieces tell me what they are best able to become. And when they are made into something beautiful and useful, with sharp-edged tools, by hand and eye, rather than by machine, I finish them with natural oils and waxes to let their beauty shine through.

I have been working with wood for half a century, living with it, learning from it, discovering what it and I can do together. Each piece I make starts as a fresh response to the function possible in a given piece of wood, a practice that aims at melding form and function, into beauty.

RED FARMHOUSE WORKSHOPS