Feats of Woodworking: Wendell Castle's "Ghost Clock"

I love going to galleries and museums, but it's a rare and amazing thing to truly be stunned by a work of art. When that happens, you never forget it. One of these times was when I stumbled upon John Everett Millais's painting of Ophelia (titled Ophelia, appropriately enough) at the Tate Gallery in London.

Another time was when I saw Wendell Castle's Ghost Clock at the Renwick Gallery in Washinton, DC. I was at the Renwick to see furniture and craft. This was at least ten years ago and I had never heard of Wendell Castle. You can imagine my surprise when I turned a corner and saw this:


At just over seven feet tall, it's a formidable presence in the room. I love grandfather clocks, the older the better, so I was immediately drawn to it. Old grandfather clocks are haunted enough as it is, but one covered with a sheet is particularly captivating. It immediately suggests an abandoned house with its furniture covered in a futile effort to protect it from dust and weather. But the closer you get, the more compelling it is until finally you realize that this isn't a clock covered by a sheet at all. The whole thing, including the sheet, is carved out of mahogany. Castle made it in 1985.

The photograph is used with grateful acknowledgment of the Renwick Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. There is tons of excellent furniture to be seen on their website: americanart.si.edu. You have to search a bit, but it's there. I suggest you go to the collections search page, put 'furniture' in the Keyword box and select 'Crafts' in the Artwork Type dropdown list. You'll see great work by Maloof, Nakashima, Knox Bennett and many other American masters. Of course, you can also go there in person!

Feats of Woodworking: GreenWood Edition

Last Wednesday's (12/04/08) NY Times included an article about responsibly-grown Christmas trees featuring Friend-of-Furnitude Curtis Buchanan. This is only one of Curtis' environmental efforts. The other is an organization called GreenWood, which, according to its website, "trains artisans to make high-quality wood products, adding value to forest resources and creating incentives to protect biodiversity." He co-founded GreenWood with Brian Boggs and Scott Landis.

The people they train in Latin America's rain forest areas can earn better wages making furniture and other wood products than they can working in the timber and factory farm industries, whose practices indiscriminately destroy everything in their path. GreenWood is protecting the environment and improving people's lives in the process. Through their considerable effort and generosity of time and spirit, they are turning a vicious cycle into a virtuous one.

Read more about GreenWood at www.greenwoodglobal.org.

My posts about Curtis and Brian are below:

Furniture I Love: Curtis Buchanan Edition
Furniture I Love: Brian Boggs Edition

Feats of Woodworking: Studley Toolchest

I was reminded by this post from Boing Boing of the incredible 19th Century toolchest made by Massachusetts piano maker Henry O. Studley.

Wow.

Here's an article from Fine Woodworking about the restoration of the chest. Look at the comments in the Boing Boing post for references to more articles and the poster available from The Taunton Press.

Thanks, Boing Boing!

Feats of Woodworking: Robotic Chair Edition

Sure, it can fix itself. But what I want is a chair that can build itself!



Read more about it here.

Found, oddly enough, at Crooks and Liars.

Feats of Woodworking: Splinter Supercar Edition

I'm not sure you can get any cooler than this in the world of woodworking. What's next? A wooden robot??? I wouldn't put it past Joe Harmon, of Joe Harmon Design.

(I got the photo via Design-Milk.)

This isn't just a car. It's a supercar with a twin-supercharged V8 engine (still, it would be no match for my Honda Fit!). According to its stupendous website, the Splinter Supercar is an experiment in testing the limits of wood as a building material. Harmon is doing the project as part of a graduate degree in Industrial Design at North Carolina State University. It's not like this is a normal car with a wooden shell stuck on top of it. In fact, as many of the components of the car as possible -- including the chasis, the body, the suspension and parts of the wheels -- are made of wood. Most of the parts are molded out of veneers using vaccuum presses.

I'm particularly impressed with the design and execution of the suspension. Harmon and his team "decided a leaf spring was nothing more than a bigger, stiffer version of a longbow, so [they] researched bow making and came upon a wood called osage orange. The strongest wood found in North America, it has properties that make it excellent for use in longbows." What's so impressive about this feat is not just the design itself, but all the work that went into learning how to do each thing along the way, such as his research into bow making. I really love the spirit of that. The ambition of this project reminds me of that of the Hughes H-4 Hercules (the so-called (incorrectly so) "Spruce Goose") designed and flown by Howard Hughes.

For any of you attending the IWF (International Woodworking Fair) in Atlanta, PLEASE report back about what this car is like in person. For those who want to explore the process more, the documentation of the project is epic. I encourage you to read the "innovation" section on the website.

See excellent process photos on Harmon's flickr photostream.

See numerous videos on the YouTube.

Here's Dawson's introduction video:

Via Design-Milk. Link.

Feats of Woodworking

You've got to check this out. This gentleman may very well be Santa Claus -- or at least one of the top-tier elves. My favorite things: the beautiful uselessness of this contraption, his measuring-tape suspenders (I've got to get a set of those!) and the fact that he's got this thing set up on top of his tablesaw. I can imagine something like this coming up on Antiques Roadshow in about 50 years and commanding top dollar as folk art, which indeed it is.



Link via Boingboing.net Save yourself! Whatever you do, don't go to boingboing.net! There are many other amazing contraptions in this vein on YouTube.