Been out of town the past ten plus days, hence the lack of new material here. Attended my brother’s wedding and sister’s graduation. Here are a couple of photos representative of the trip:

We drive home tomorrow and I’m glad there’s nothing travel-related on the schedule at this point until December. It’s been a very busy Spring.

I just learned of San Francisco startup Ponoko via TechCrunch. I’m still trying to understand the details, but the concept rocks.

From what I can tell so far this is the premise. Upload your design for a product and Ponoko, which has a factory in San Francisco, will make it for you. You can sell your blueprints for other people to make and can also use the website to market your designs, which Ponoko will build and ship to you to ship to the purchaser — at least that’s how I’ve understood the process up to this point. The home page of their website shows links that direct to Your own personal factory (”How to make”) or and an Online showroom (”How to sell”).

They claim the process of on demand creation will cut down on the waste of overproduction, and also grants the desires of shoppers who may not find exactly what they are after in the aisles of big box retailers, lined with mass produced products. A service definitely worth checking out. I might try it out and see if I can’t successful plug my table design which I referred to earlier this week.

Not ceramics or sculpture this time, but furniture. My brother asked me to build a bed; he gets married this coming weekend. As a wedding gift I’m throwing in some side tables to match.

I like building furniture, but don’t make a habit of it since I really don’t have the necessary space or tools. I have friends with table-saws, but my garage is narrow and the ceiling short. Somehow I manage, but the tables above aren’t as square as I’d like. The door I’m currently using as my workbench top is anything but level. For clay this is fine; not so much for building beds. Of course, only I, the builder, will ever notice such details.

This is soft maple, which I haven’t used before — at least not on this scale. It responds pretty nicely to the tools, but I’m learning it doesn’t take stain very well. This has become problematic as my brother and his fiance are adamant about a dark stain. It was hard enough to find maple in the first place. They would have been OK with another wood, but I kept looking and finally found a place here in Northwest Arkansas that sells hardwoods other than oak and poplar. So I ran with the maple.

The other trick will be transporting it to Nebraska, where the wedding is and bride and groom reside. The pieces should just fit in our Camry wagon as I’ve measured. But paying for shipping didn’t seem like a reasonable option in this case.

I like my design for the side tables. The small shelf underneath the top acts to reinforce the legs, and essentially “floats” in notches I carved by hand. The hand-carving went really well, much better than in the past thanks to some better tools and more experience under my belt. I also mortised and tenonned the legs and footboard more or less by hand. I like working when I can without the aid of powered machines. I don’t have anything against a table saw or drill press (both of which I’ve used for this project), but there is something much more rewarding about taking a chisel and mallet in your hands and working the wood.

The tops of the table, as well as the stone detail in the center stile of the headboard as pictured above, will be travertine marble.

Today is one of two weeks of cleanup performed by the city in Siloam Springs. Place anything you want to dispose of by the road and by Friday it is supposed to have disappeared, carried off either by the official crane-truck or by citizens hunting for treasures.

And there are some treasures. Two houses down from my own were two pieces of furniture that caught my eye, one a decent looking table top. Both were gone within hours of being placed roadside. I didn’t even wander down to examine them after thinking about the storage nightmare they would create — this on a weekend I spent cleaning and organizing. In fact the pile in front of that particular house dwindled down to almost nothing before being restocked this morning with a beastly, legless pool table among other odds and ends.

This post, however, refers to the darker side of the twice annual junk-fest. I couldn’t help but think of the wasteful society we live in as I passed by pile after pile of stuff. Regular readers know this rant already. In our mass-producing, mass-consuming culture little consideration is given to how many of these trinkets will end up in landfills. With the environmental movements of recent years this is changing to a degree, but very slowly.

Take the chair in the above photograph for instance. We’ll ignore its lack of aesthetic appeal in this particular dialogue. First off it’s not in that bad of shape. Why is it being thrown away; did the owners trade up? The dog got a hold of one corner and the fabric is a bit faded, but most college students would love to have this in their dorm room. So it might be missing its feet; what are bricks and two-by-fours for!

I can imagine, just by the looks of it, that is a cheap chair — like so much factory fare in our day and age. The company’s bottom line drives design and choice of materials. Everything has to be as inexpensive as possible in order to maximize profits to pad the CEO’s bonus and keep the shareholders happy. Further, the shorter the life-span of a gadget or appliance the sooner it will need to be replaced, thereby ensuring future sales for the company — so long as they can create brand loyalty and/or attract new buyers.

Can’t companies come up with ways to create more enduring products and still make money (Or do we first need to get them to agree to make less money?). Do consumers need to be convinced it’s worth it to spend a little more for a chair or dining room table (or house, for that matter) that possesses some staying power?

I happened upon the website of woodworker J. Alexander this morning and thought it warranted props and a link. Basically, the guy builds custom furniture. Here’s a screenshot from his gallery:

What I found noteworthy on this website were a couple of blurbs on the information page, speaking to our generally bland, homogenous, mass-produced visual culture:

Finishing Process

The finishing process is what makes a custom piece of furniture really stand out from its mass produced counterpart. There are no short-cuts around here. Each item is painstakingly finished to accentuate the beauty of the wood and ensure its overall durability.

Cost

Custom furniture is of course more expensive than a lower-end mass produced item, but when compared to high-end brands such as Ethan Allen, Thomasville, and others, my prices are usually very competitive. On top of that, your funiture will have been painstakingly created by hand by a local craftsman.

Kudos to the handmade, to enduring functional (and/or decorative) objects worth keeping around for generations. My great grandfather built two library tables — among many other objects — during his lifetime, either of which I’m sure anyone in my family would love to end up with one day. He crafted a base for one; for the other, my grandfather — his son — hand-carved legs in the shape of elephant heads, the trunks supporting the tabletop, a few years back. Both are beautifully and intricately inlaid, the one in my father’s possession having as a focal point a detailed rose.

A few weeks ago I realized something. I’m passionate about living spaces. This isn’t really a revelation. What it is is a succinct way to describe how I’m wired. I’ve been interested in residential architecture since I was twelve years old. This new phrase, however, causes me to think differently about choices I’ve made in the past and will make in the future.

I had coffee with Joel Armstrong this morning. Afterwards we put my bike in his van and drove to his house to pick through the treasures in his garage. From there we drove back towards my place. This is where the story gets interesting — and where it relates to my passion for home interiors.

If I were driving we would have turned down Jefferson to get home. Joel stuck to Main Street, which is not really much slower. Main goes through downtown. It goes right by the Siloam Springs building I spoke of a few weeks ago.

When I looked at the building with a realtor two years ago I saw a piece of furniture, an antique buffet. The buffet stood out in the dusty unfinished second floor space. I almost called the owners and asked if I could have it. I regret not doing that. I told my friend who has a contract on the building I wanted it and he said sure, although neither of us knew if it would still be there when he signed the papers.

So Joel and I drove by said building on Saturday. A sign on the window said “free stuff.” We like free stuff (and I knew the buffet might be in there) so we stopped. We wandered into the building and another “customer” pointed out who was in charge. Just as I was about to get the opportunity to talk to the owners, the ones giving the stuff away, the lady right in front of me found one of the doors from the buffet in a pile of stuff. She asked the owner what the door went with and when the owner pointed to the glorious buffet the lady was almost giddy. And claimed it immediately.

The buffet was in better shape than I remembered (other than one of the four curved doors being off of it). It’s about 40 inches tall. I failed to note the flavor of the exterior veneers, but the inside of the doors were birds-eye maple. It boasted clean shelving and built-in drawers for, I assume, silver. Some of the inlay on the outside of the doors needed attention, but I happen to know that the claimer’s husband is a cabinet maker with an enviable wood shop. This same claimer also goes to my church and lives immediately next door to good friends of mine.

Even after she claimed the majestic piece I asked the building owners where it came from. They said it was left by a tenant who couldn’t pay rent. That tenant was apparently a nephew of the late Wal-Mart heiress Helen Walton. History like this adds incredible value to such an antique, although had I been able to take the thing home I would have kept it. I gave this piece of information to the claimer on our way out of the building, infusing her with another round of giddiness. She hurried back into the building to ask more about the history after calling her husband and telling him to “Come now! Bring truck!”.

If I would have stepped into the building 60 seconds earlier the buffet would have been mine. The claimer said she was willing to wrestle for it. I should have taken her up on this offer.

Of course, it seemed we were a couple minutes too late for any of the good stuff. There were two other interesting pieces of furniture — one a disassembled wardrobe as beautiful as the buffet — that the other couple milling around in the junk already claimed. As it was the building owners (reputed in town for their apparent unwillingness to keep up or sell at reasonable prices the many downtown buildings they own) hadn’t even decided amongst themselves what they were giving away or keeping. The one other thing I really wanted, a little balance scale, they decided they were keeping. I would have used the scale for weighing out materials in glaze-making. I went home with a couple antique-y things for my dad, hardly qualifying as any kind of consolation prize.

Is it insane to obsess so much over a dusty old piece of furniture? I spent the next few hours thinking about this whole scenario. First of all I wondered why God, in whom I believe strongly and trust to take care of me (even if this is in ways I don’t understand), would allow me to even see the “free stuff” sign. Why did He pick this Saturday for Joel to insist I go back to his house? Why didn’t I suggest Joel take Jefferson instead of letting him keep driving down Main Street? If we wouldn’t have seen the sign I would never have known what I missed out on, that I was less than a minute from getting this wonderful piece of furniture for free, a piece of furniture I had longed for for two years or more. I would have assumed, after my friend signs the contract on the building in September, that the owners took it with them. It was never guaranteed that I would get it.

And it would have been less torment if we arrived at the building later, after the claimer drove off with the buffet. The claimer who I will now see every week at church, reminding me of my loss. It says in the Bible, in the book of James, that we are to rejoice in tribulation. For me this is tribulation.

I hope I came across as civilized to the claimer. I didn’t take her up on her wrestling challenge. I tried to say encouraging things, although I can’t remember exactly how any of them came out. I remember saying something like, “Well, I’m glad there are other people in Siloam with such good taste.” I’m not sure if this came out in a positive or negative way to the hearers. I did call my friend, the claimer’s neighbor, and suggest he go next door and lust after the beautiful object (said mostly in jest, of course). My friend didn’t do this, which I suppose I should be thankful for.

Part of my interest probably stems from being a dumpster-diver, from my keen interest in salvage and restoration. This was a find, an incredible find. And the claimer knew it. And I’m sincerely happy for her. I’m just quite sad for myself. And my wife, who was with me when we saw the buffet two years ago, is almost as sad.

What will I learn from this experience? Am I supposed to learn something, or am I just supposed to give grace which in turn will make God look good — which I’m perfectly OK with and which God deserves from us. Or maybe I was supposed to wrestle this woman, probably only five years older than me (roughly). Maybe my wrestling her for this beautiful piece of furniture would be kind of like Jesus’ anger at the vendors in the Temple. After all, I do believe that my passionate interest in beautiful, tactile things is a gift from God.

I know, I know, that last one is more than a little bit of a stretch. Truth is I have know idea why God allowed this to happen in my life. I may never know.

Part of the humor in the whole adventure was that Joel didn’t come away with much free stuff either, and he’s as much of a salvage monkey as I am. He kept asking for the junkiest and most obscure little items — an old sign, spools of wire — which the owners of the building decided on the spot they were keeping. Old, half-used spools of steel wire they keep, and significant, wondermous antique furniture formerly owned by the Walton family they give away! How incredibly strange this seems to me!

I know that I will look back on the morning and laugh.

Once I get over my insane sadness. Once I stop kicking myself for not being more aggressive, for not walking into the building and yelling “Where’s the buffet that used to be upstairs? I want it!” which, my wife will tell you, isn’t all that much out of character for me.