Seating for two. Or four. Truthfully though I still think I maybe came in 44th place of all those who played along. (See my saved stories for all the entries.) And, of course, these beautiful photos were made by my supremely talented sister @megapixie. 😘😘

Oak as texture, but blue. (Note to future-self, and anyone else: consider the scale of the work when developing samples - reworking a process right at the end of a project is annoying.)

Dovetails are beautiful. And a fun challenge. But I don’t think they should be used as a proxy for a beautiful design: they are just a part of the whole. Getting the “whole” of a piece to be good is a much more difficult thing.

Sunday afternoon. Desk, me circa 2010. Chair, David Douyard circa 2019 Rug, Ursula Brown circa 1978

Don’t like quarter sawn white oak? Bear with me. Love quarter sawn white oak? Maybe also bear with me.

Chairs are best understood in person, but maybe a little spin will suit for the two-dimensional world.

I think of design as more a mood than a look.

The Four Stages of Design. (Not shown, the Fifth Stage, which closely resembles the Third.)

When I recommend cherry for a job I pretty much always say something to the effect of “it’s fine at first, but it really needs a couple years to start to reveal itself.” It takes time to build a good piece, but a good piece should only get better with time.

I’ll get you caught up on the furniture stuff soon. For now, I don’t want to break my annual sweethearts post streak. (Now, I’m going to go clean behind the W/D.)

Sold! Only took 3 years - which is largely why I don’t do a lot of spec work, but sometimes you just have to indulge. Still one of my favorite construction puzzles and some of my favorite details. Miles of schlepping, galleries, shows, and in the end it was our Google overlords who made it happen. 🤷‍♂️

There were challenges this year*. Hopefully, at some point, we will look back and see that there was also growth. (As always @megapixie with the perfect photos. ❤️) *gross understatement

Time for the annual “what weird things did I make my family this year?” post. Semi-functional metaphors for all!

Delivery day. I like to pre-grimify my work - that way people are more comfortable using it.

Why is this always the point at which I remember to do this?

Corner office, corner desk.

Getting close. And about to get dressed up a bit. So I guess it’s a good time to leave town. ✌️

#jazzfurniture

Some intersections. (Why is it so hard to photograph furniture?! Actually, this is related to a theory of mine: how, regarding a lot of dominant design, trends seem directly tied to how easily it can be instagrammed (or the like). It seems that’s the stuff that manages to wrangle the algorithms and becomes the assumed standard, which can dictate (passive) tastes and even taste-makers who are both trying to stay just ahead of the next trend, but safely within the (monetize-able) current. Maybe that’s just what popular design always has been - the stuff that’s best suited to get in front of the most people and be easily digested. I don’t mean to sound whiny, just an observation... which could be wrong. Either way, for anyone out there who looks at the the prescribed “cool” and finds it kind of boring, I’m with you on team “I’d rather build stuff that is more interesting in person, that changes as you move around it, that feels good to the hand, that will look better in 10 years than it does today...” ok this is getting pretty cornball. ✌️)

The blue one.