“…the richest vein is somewhere here abouts”—Henry David Thoreau
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY RICK MASTELLI
Shaping a Windsor chair seat would seem a straightforward task. Though the blank can be twenty inches wide and two inches thick—a substantial piece of wood—it’s typically straight-grained pine or poplar and only sometimes a more figured species. But wood always has its peculiarities, and even anticipated challenges can surprise and educate you.
Then there are the traditions. You might begin simply copying them. The fair curves and complex shape of a Windsor seat—the dips and swells of the contours that accommodate the sitter, the distinctive S-curve sides and angular tail of some styles—all remind you of and draw you into a resonant tradition of formal function and delight for the eye and hand (and butt). As you understand such a tradition, your work evolves—and through such informed work, the tradition is likely to evolve, too.
That tradition, of course, is connected to many others, not only in woodworking, but throughout design and craft and art. Bowls, for instance—certainly dough bowls and other carved woodenware from the cultures of northern Europe and early America—are not unlike Windsor chair seats. They are made using the same tools: a saw, an adze, gouges. But most of the bowls on these pages, also sawn and carved, are visually at odds with those traditions, more reminiscent perhaps of objects found in the paintings of Braque and Picasso when they were creating Cubism. Like those paintings, these bowls may look disquieting at first, until you spend some time and thought with them.
The bowl at the bottom of the facing page is the first in an ongoing series by Drew Langsner, an accomplished chairmaker known also for his traditional dough bowls and Swedish spoons. This bowl began as a rejected Windsor chair-seat blank. Langsner says that his work on this bowl, his attentions and intentions (except that he regards these finished objects as useful for bringing food to table), could not be more different from the work he does to create a Windsor chair seat or a traditional dough bowl. That work, as he characterizes it, is formal, conscious, conventional. This work is not so controlled, rather valuing a more immediate, more receptive encounter with the natural world. It is inspired not only by the grain, bark, and other particularities of the blank (often the kinds of troublesome features that cause a blank to be rejected for conventional applications), but also by what Langsner calls “non-intelligent design.” A half-satiric comment on a current cultural divide, he refers to the natural order of things as we unexpectedly encounter it. We are struck by the beauty and inherent rightness of the pattern of pebbles washed on a beach or the green gleam of a moss-dabbled rock in a shaft of forest light. Even in the random framing of a leafy tree through a window pane, we sense perfection in awe and wonder rather than through planning and toiling.
“White Pond…is a lesser twin of Walden. They are so much alike that you would say they must be connected under ground.” (Walden, Ch. 9)
Above left: “Bowl #7” (2007); sassafras; 2¼″ × 9″ × 11″. Right and facing page: “Bowl #8” (2007); sassafras; 2¼″ × 10¼″ × 11¼″.
I saw the natural wonder in Langsner’s new creations looking through the lens of my camera. Lighting them to highlight their shapes and textures, I became increasingly appreciative of what they had to say about contrast, balance, repetition, symmetry, and the glancings off such ideals. From above, they seemed distant views of landscape features, as seen from an airliner. Close up, they took on the characteristics of monumental land forms, sometimes other-worldly, like lunar craters or the promontories of Gondor. Sometimes, they appeared almost as what they are: chunks of wood found in a forest after years of growth and decay, a testament to the ageless cycles that predate humans—outstanding objects more found than made.
Langsner’s first bowl in this series is closest to the Windsor chair-seat blank it came from. It is also like a moon crater, with handles. “Bowl #1” (2007); sassafras; 2″ × 14¼″ × 17½″.
Whatever the abstraction, these perceptions have encouraged rich meditations. I gravitated toward seeing the excavations as lake or pond beds, recognizing that the water at rest in an actual pond is a perfectly horizontal plane (not unlike the top surface of these bowls), and that below it the shape, texture, and depth of the concavity are captivating. I began to frame a mission like that of the master contemplator of ponds, Henry David Thoreau, “to find the bottom of Walden Pond and what inlet and outlet it may have.” For Thoreau, getting to the bottom of Walden Pond was a symbol for living deeply. He asks, “Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?” It may well be because they are precisely the objects that we behold, because our beholding them is a constructive process, the essence of creation.
Opposite, top: Where does the bowl begin and the blank end? “The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things.” (Walden, Ch. 2). “Bowl #5” (2008); butternut; 2″ × 11¼″ × 10½″.
Opposite, bottom: “Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors, but being liquid and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor.” (Walden, Ch. 9). “3-D Studies” (2008); sassafras; 1″ thick each.
This page: “The surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east they attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively…” (Walden, Ch. 9). Underside of “Bowl #8” (2007); sassafras; 2¼″ × 10¼″ × 11¼″.
“Let us settle ourselves,” writes Thoreau, “and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance…till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d’appui…” A point of support, a foundation. For Thoreau, and for Langsner in these new works, nature rather than tradition provides such a foundation. These untraditional-looking bowls, grounded in the nature of the material they are made of, are also rooted in aesthetic values different from those he has worked before: “Not a rejection of good design,” says Langsner, “but something else, something as good and refreshing as natural, responsive compositions.”
The Finishing Stroke
THERE WAS AN ARTIST in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a staff. Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance because he could not overcome him. Before he had found a stock in all respects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick. Before he had given it the proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the time he had smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere he had put on the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I stay to mention these things? When the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair proportions; in which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places. And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. The material was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful? (excerpt from Walden, Ch. 18)
Of course, it is in the eye of the beholder that such endeavors may succeed. But a Windsor chair seat or a dough bowl does not typically engender such fundamental considerations. On the other hand, work that sets out to align itself with nature will never succeed unhinged from human consciousness or without a thumbprint. The hand of a maker, in this case versed in the tools and techniques of Windsors and woodenware, is impossible to eliminate, and it would be counter-productive to try. The tracks of these traditions may be serving a different aesthetic and intent, but they are here and they contribute. Turn over one of these bowls and you will see the same flat surface you see on the underside of a Windsor chair seat. Just as in bottoming out in Walden, you encounter language steeped in the classics, of various cultures.
Rick Mastelli lives and works in Montpelier, Vermont. Go to www.DrewLangsner.com to see more photos of Langsner’s recent work.