For Memorial Day, my buddy Dennis of Austen Morris Furniture and I decided to treat ourselves to a day in the shop! While we spend every day in the shop, this was special: we were challenging ourselves to design and build a piece of furniture in one day. Here’s out it came about:
Dennis saw a YouTube video in which two designers were given old school lawn chairs and asked to redesign them. They had a day to do it. That was the inspiration. Rather than start with an off-the-shelf product and redesign, we asked our Instagram followers to vote on what we should design and build. Of the options: table, bench, shelf, home good, the voters chose benches.
We set some other parameters for ourselves: minimum of 4 board feet of lumber; had to be designed AND built the same day; lumber could be pre-milled. One main species with others allowed; hardware was permitted. Finish could be wet, but had to be applied.
We worked out of Dennis’s shop, which is close to mine. My shop is a coop and he is the sole craftsperson in his, so working there ensured we wouldn’t have to share equipment with anyone else. His family joined us for lunch, which was super sweet, and we basically worked uninterrupted for the whole day. In the end, I think we both designed and built great pieces, each very different and in our own voice. Admittedly, I called it around 4:30 in the afternoon. I had about 4-5 more hours of work left and only about 30 minutes of steam. Dennis could have crossed the finished line but magnanimously decided to press pause as well. We each finished in the subsequent days. I had some help from Candice, who works with me a few days each week.
This is the bench I built. It is solid sapele throughout. The difference in color is kind of amazing within a single species.
Detailed shot.
Here is Dennis’s bench. He used Ash (the lighter wood) and walnut. The short back detail is a really cool aspect of this piece which I think gives a traditional staked design a modern feel.
details.
A few major takeaways I wanted share here. First, craftspeople do not generally enjoy working fast. Making things is a slow and deliberate process and we take our time to make things as perfectly as possible. However, as business owners, we also need to be fast if we want to make a living. Like any athlete will tell you, the way to run faster is to run faster; you have to push yourself to new speeds, maybe faster than you’re comfortable with, if you want to move your baseline up. However, you can’t really take the risk of increasing your speed, or training, as it were, while you’re working on a commission for someone else. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend normal business hours “training”…so a holiday was a good opportunity for this.
Also, it was just fun. When you’re doing this as a business and have to be persistently mindful of the clients’ needs, the agreed upon design, the budget, etc., it’s really nice to just make stuff. I’m not sure if Michael Phelps can just relax by the pool, but that’s the analogy here (not to say we’re the Michael Phelpses of the wood shop; it was just a good punchline). Being able to play at your craft and take a day to do it, feels like an extravagance, but like any element of “play” it adds to the overall value of your work.
Special thanks to Dennis and his family (who took time to bring us lunch and hang out). AND, for sharing their dad/husband on a holiday.
