It’s not that big a loft…

the loft isn’t all that large; only 12′ x 8′. But I manage to pull a lot of stuff down from there…lately it’s been butternut boards. I have operated essentially as a mono-culture in furniture work, maybe a duo-culture. Oak and pine. Every once in a while something slightly different; usually that means ash.

Years ago, I got a job to make a walnut high chair – customer’s wood. Big mistake. Then I built a chest with walnut I selected. Better. Then quartersawn walnut – now I started to get it. Riven- even better. But it’s still very dark, and for someone who relies on shadows to see what I’m carving, that gets tricky. I finally got the hang of it, but I don’t come across it very much.  I just finished this little walnut box – it was in the loft and just needed some molding here & there. And a cleaning…

I always joke that the best thing walnut does is sell. And I stubbornly keep making things from oak…then I went back into the loft and pulled down some butternut boards. I have often said, but maybe not often enough, I have great friends. In this case, Michael Burrey, https://www.instagram.com/mlbrestorations/?hl=en  who pretty much made me take these butternut boards from him. I might have paid him a pittance for one of them, but I think I got several in a couple of trips there…

Butternut (Juglans cinerea) is related to walnut, softer wood, lighter in color. On the left below is a board that has about 16″ of usable width, by 4′ in length. The narrower one I split apart from a wider board, to yield quartersawn material.

Looking at the end grain – the quartersawn one on top, its annular rings are perpendicular to the board’s face. It has very straight, boring grain. I love it, it’s perfect. The bottom one is the wider stock, flatsawn. You can see the growth rings wiggle this way & that. The fibers in the board’s face have a corresponding waviness to them…

The quartersawn face –

Even though this flatsawn face has some wild grain pattern, it planes easily and cleanly.

I had very limited experience with butternut before – this chip-carved box has butternut sides and ends, but a pine lid & bottom. I keep sharpening stuff in it. This butternut was radially riven – and worked like a dream.

I didn’t push the material too far, just the simplest of chip carving work.

I posted something on Instagram about butternut the other day, and Ouida Vincent reminded me that up in the loft is this not-finished sliding lid box with a drawer. So all the easy parts are done, now just the hard bits. This I made out of boards like the wavy one – I remember some of the carving digging in here & there, tearing things up when I wasn’t careful.

But I jumped ahead and started a new box from the quartersawn agreeable stuff. And I had the best time working this one so far…the detail at the top of the post is the ends of this box…

So, if you run across some butternut, grab it. Amazingly nice wood. Now, back to what I was doing…I’m not going up into the loft til these are done & gone.

The black walnut box is for sale – $800 shipped in US. Size is 11 1/4″ x 15 1/2″ x 4 3/4″ high. white oak back & bottom, blacksmith hinges.

Basket making video Handles & Rims; drawings next

OK – a few things. A couple of chairs & boxes are left, those things are selling in dribs & drabs. I can always make more, too… https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/ladderback-chairs-oak-boxes-for-sale/

Daniel & I finally sat down & finished the next basket video; Handles & Rims.

I’m sorry it’s taking so long with this set of videos. When I shoot them, I’m both cameraman and subject. On something at the bench, that’s not difficult to do; but with the baskets, I’m always picking them up, shifting them this way & that…so there’s a lot of editing involved. Sometimes, I just don’t have the shot we need to get the point across – and it’s too late to go back & shoot more right now. So caveat emptor.

There’s still a couple of baskets left for sale too. Email me if you are interested, and I’ll send photos & specs.

The drawings of carving patterns arrived yesterday.

Now to sort them, roll them into mailing tubes and set up the page for it. There will be a blog post and a video very soon showing what these are, and what they aren’t. I’ll get on it right away. I have no idea how to gauge how these will sell, so I started with 50 sets…means there’s maybe 46 or so to sell…but I can get more if we need them.

Leftover walnut box

I engage in this ridiculous fantasy that I will get the loft in my shop cleaned up & functional, beyond dis-organized storage. Every so often I get close to halfway there…then all hell breaks loose again. I was up there last week and found this walnut box, filled with odd (mis-matched) coils of hickory bark. I knew right above the box were some walnut boards I brought home from Heather’s one year…and that I had one more pair of hinges. So the time was right to finish off this box that might be 10 years old…

The carving is based on a London-style box fragment I once studied, from the first decade of the 17th century. Otherwise, I made up the whole thing according to some walnut boards I had at the time. Dovetailed corners, the back board is white oak, the bottom white pine. The attached base molding covers the edges of the bottom. No till inside, just a bare-bones box.

H: 6 1/2″ W: 24 1/4″  D: 14 3/4″

I can’t sell a 10-year old box for brand-new prices, so this one’s $650 including shipping in US.

SOLD 

 

I added it to the page with new boxes and ladderback chairs https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/ladderback-chairs-oak-boxes-for-sale/

Leave a comment here, or send an email if you’d like this box of any of the other work for sale…

peterfollansbee7@gmail.com

 

a few ladderbacks & oak boxes for sale

Daniel & I are slowly working out the next basket video, but we’re on it. Today I made a page of a few ladderback chairs & two oak boxes for sale. https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/ladderback-chairs-oak-boxes-for-sale/

If any of it catches your eye, leave me a comment, or send an email – peterfollansbee7@gmail.com

Two of the ladderbacks are at a slightly reduced price, details on the page – one of them is this slightly used Shaker-tape seat chair.

My cousin Paula came by recently, brought her husband Jim so he could buy her a carved oak box for her birthday. She had picked out this one:

But then when they got here, she chose a different one. (You should have seen that one! I almost brought it into the house…)

So now the one I had set aside is available…it’s a very nice box. Oak lid, nails & hinges by Tom Latane, till inside, etc.

I’ll make a separate page for the big-ticket items, I never expect them to fly out the door. But eventually someone finds them – chests, wainscot chairs, etc.

late summer photos

Just what it says. First, looking down the river early in the morning

One day I was down there at low tide, and was able to get this heron who was stalking by…

Some years ago, this was all just a lawn. Maureen killed it to put in this garden over the past two summers. It’s a great improvement, now a very lively place.

One of this year’s sunflowers. It’s been very dry here this year, and her garden has struggled, but it’s still better than the lawn..

We’ve been over-run with rabbits, seems like every week there’s a new batch. I zoomed on this photo and can see my reflection in his pupil.

 

Opening up the shop very early one morning. When we had a heat wave, I’d sometimes start work in there about 6:30 am.

Then later in the day, I’d go swimming in the river. If the tide was right…

Back to some of those early-morning shots of great blue herons. At first, I thought there was two of them…

Then I stepped a bit further, and spooked two more…

One day I heard all this commotion out in the river, and looked out and there was about 20 teenagers floating down the river. I’d never seen it before, but Maureen said she’s seen it each summer. I must have been travelling.

I don’t take pictures of the shavings, in fact I rail against them. But I do shoot photos of these tendrils. So I guess I’ll shut up.

A swallowtail butterfly, I think. Is it an eastern tiger swallowtail? I don’t know butterflies well.

I do know the birds. Here’s a northern cardinal molting most of his feathers at once. He looks a wreck, but he’s fine. I’ve seen him since, and he’s filling those feathers back out…

some color:

The anti-gravity squirrel.

The juvenile red-tailed hawk – he’s welcome to some rabbits, or chipmunks.

A wren, outside the shop. Sometimes they’re inside the shop too.

Heather Neill’s Youtube channel

You remember Heather Neill – her work appears here every now & then. My closest far-away friend…whom I miss terribly this year.

One of the last times I featured her work here

– https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/im-speechless-if-you-can-imagine-that/

Every summer about this time we take a day-trip to Martha’s Vineyard to visit Heather & Pat who are usually up here then for Heather’s annual showing of her paintings at the Granary Gallery.  But of course, not this summer. The Gallery is open, they’re just not going to be up here for it. 

But, if you’ve ever looked at a painting and wanted to know what the artist was thinking, doing, aiming for, etc – Heather’s got you covered. Every year she writes up and posts on her blog the “Painter’s Notes” for each painting. This year she wrote them, but then as a bonus, made & posted videos of her reading them, and you get to see the details you’d get if you were in the gallery.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr5V2NLf6_DnGkNzqH-amHA

As I was getting this blog post ready, I went to Heather’s new youtube channel to get some links, and found the newest video, a sort-of interview with her and her wife Pat – so that’s as good a place as any to start. Then go see the rest. Amazing work, great people.

 

there’s lots – some are her reading the notes, a couple others tell broader parts of the stories. Some just show us the paintings.

Her blog is here – https://heatherneill.com/studio-blog/

And the Granary Gallery here – (these aren’t the new paintings, I couldn’t find them yet. Maybe soon?) But you can still buy the one of me carving a spoon…  https://granarygallery.com/artist-works.php?artistId=196643&artist=Heather+Neill

Get well, Drew Langsner

I’ve been finishing up some stuff in the shop, pegging the slats in this hickory ladderback chair this afternoon. It’s nearly impossible for me to work on projects like this one & not think of my friend Drew Langsner. I sound like a broken record over the years, but Drew and his wife Louise changed my life.

l.-r. Drew Langsner, Jögge Sundqvist, Louise Langsner, Peter Follansbee

Many others too I’m sure. 2020 has not been a good year for anyone, or if it has, they had best keep quiet about it. For Drew, it featured a long medical hassle that he’d just come through when two weeks ago as a coda he had emergency bypass surgery. I spoke to him the other day, and he was happy to be home after his time in the hospital. He had great praise for the staff at the Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C. – and was relating to me all the new challenges; (“if your butt goes down, your feet come up” is the new mantra). Finding a flat place to walk around their farm is the trick now…

If you’re not familiar with Drew’s work; it’s a long story, but from about 1977 onward for 40 years, he & Louise ran a hand-tool woodworking school  on their place in western North Carolina. Starting with just a few week-long classes in the summer, eventually they added workshops year-round. Chair-making, basketry, timber framing, spoon & bowl carving, Japanese woodworking tools, and on & on. If you carve spoons in slojd/sloyd style in America – it’s because of them, whether you know it or not. I’ve written about their place a number of times over the years – https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/?s=country+workshops

He’s written several books, the first one I saw was Country Woodcraft back in 1978. Lost Art Press is working on the new edition of that book, slated to come out this year. I’ll be sure to post a notice when it’s available. Back at Greenwood Fest #2 in 2017, we were lucky enough to be able to host Drew & Louise as a way of honoring their enduring contribution to our craft. This is a group photo from our Greenwood Fest of folks who had been to Country Workshops at some point over the years…

It was a highlight for me to be able to include them that way in that event, after all they’ve done for me. They gave a talk there about the 40-year history of their school Country Workshops. It was great to view those old, and not-so-old, photos, but few have Drew in them…someone sent me this one of Drew from that visit in Plymouth in 2017. 

So, now Drew is hanging around the house recuperating from heart surgery. I know he reads this blog, so if you’d like to leave a comment for him here, I’ll be sure he sees them. Even better though – if you’d like to send a card or a note in the US mail – they’ll make their way out to the mailbox at some point…that address is
Drew Langsner
775 Black Pine Ridge Rd
Marshall, N.C. 28753

 

All right, let’s send some healing best wishes down to that mountain…

carving video posted

I’ve been working on a series of carving videos to go with the upcoming drawings/patterns (out for what we figure is the final test-print now) – I’ll write more about these series of drawings soon. One thing about them is that they are grouped according to bodies of work I have studied for 30 years now. The first set will be called “Devon, England and Ipswich, Massachusetts – set 1.”  If things go well (polite-speak for “if they sell…”) there will be at least one, maybe two more from that group, and many others besides. There’s lots of groups/shop-traditions/locales – when I was studying surviving furniture, the goal was to see as many related works as possible, to better understand what is “normal” versus what is an aberration.

But there were/are times when I come across an object for which there is no known history and no obvious related works. My friend Trent and I used to use an informal shorthand for these – UFOs.

The carving at the top of this post is my version of one of these UFO patterns. It’s a typical format – the use of lunettes above and below a horizontal centerline – I carved a different take on it in my first Lie-Nielsen video years ago, and in the book Joiner’s Work. But this “infill” is slightly made up by me, using a photo from Vic Chinnery’s Oak Furniture: The British Tradition as a starting point.

So this one doesn’t fit into any grouping – thus I shot a video of it just because I had a wide enough board. And it gives us a carving video-tease until the real thing comes along… I shot some new footage for an opening sequence and Daniel put it together perfectly…we hope you like it.

We’ll still finish the basket-making series, but I’ve been up to my eyeballs in carving lately and wanted to show some. Here goes: