BY PATRICK DOWNES • PHOTOS BY DAVID UPFILL-BROWN It’s impossible to fall asleep while David Upfill-Brown talks. At the very first word, you’ll cock your head like a terrier, trying for your life to figure out his accent. Born in South Africa and raised in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, David has lived across the English-speaking...
Thread your own wooden screws BY STEVEN BUNN Even though I have a small fortune invested in tools, I always seem to be short of wooden handscrew clamps. But daydreaming about buying ten more of these versatile tools runs smack into the reality that such a purchase requires spending anywhere from $200 to $450,...
SWEDEN’S STENSUND FOLKHOGSKOLA BY DREW LANGSNER As director of Country Workshops, a small crafts school focused on traditional woodworking, I have enjoyed organizing an annual international craft tour. Since 1991, we have visited Sweden, England, Switzerland, and Japan. I organize each tour with someone well versed in the regional crafts and local culture of...
LOOKING BACK BY TOM CASPAR Sometime in the haze of the 1970s, Armand LaMontagne, a wood sculptor from Rhode Island, sought revenge against the museum world. He had been rebuffed by curators when he questioned the authenticity of some antique furniture, so he set out to vividly demonstrate the experts’ gullibility. Armand painstakingly built...
Ross Day Gets Ripe BY JONATHAN BINZEN Ross Day grew up in a scattering of towns out West in the ’50s and ’60s and early ’70s. From Denver, where he was born in 1954, his family moved to Pueblo, Colorado, then to Boise, Idaho, and, when Ross was ten, on to Seattle, where they...
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY CHRIS CHILD When you have reached the stage in woodturning when basic bowl turning no longer provides the challenge it once did, you might like to try your hand at making these two examples. One is a bowl with sides which curve round and form a stand, and the other...
Mukta’s Lotus Desk TEXT AND PHOTOS BY PETER ROBERT PRESNELL This piece was commissioned by a lady from India who now resides in Napa, California, and prefers to write letters by hand. She explained that her favorite relaxed position was sitting on the floor, whether writing by hand or working on her lap top...
Wornick Scholarship Award SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA The Wood/Furniture program at the California College of the Arts recently awarded its Ronald and Anita Wornick Scholarships. Now in their ninth year, the scholarships were established by the Wornicks to encourage excellence in furniture design and craft at the college level. The winner of this year’s competition...
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY TOM LOESER This series of “bad boats,” formally know as “Flotilla,” came out of a summer project in the woodshop at the University of Wisconsin in the summer of 2006. Two graduate students (Matthias Pliessnig and Ben Wooten) and I built three copies of a real boat, the Whitehall 12,...
The Furniture of Walker Weed BY EDWARD S. COOKE, JR. ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF WALKER WEED EXCEPT AS NOTED Walker Weed working on a dining table in his Gilford, New Hampshire shop, 1956. Nestled above the Mink Brook in Etna, New Hampshire, a half mile from the Appalachian Trail, sits a small, red, one-and-a-half...
