Andrew Pitts
- FurnitureMaker
Workshop Update 2007 No. 2
Hi Folks,
Welcome to my semi-annual e-mail update. As clients,
friends, and
supporters
I thought you might be
interested in hearing about some of my recent work, and perhaps a few
other
items
of interest to studio furniture aficionados! By the way, since
this is
an e-mail newsletter, I've linked a lot of information to sites on the
internet. Just click on the
underlined words and you will be taken to a website that will give you
more
information on that topic. For example, if you click on Andrew
Pitts ~ FurnitureMaker, you will be taken to my website. Just
remember to come back for the rest of this letter! I hope
you enjoy
the
reading.
Before I tell you about the work I've been doing,
lately, I wanted to
let
you know that I have added an interesting feature to my
website.
It is a Work
in Progress page where I discuss how I am making some of my latest
pieces. On that page you will find photos of the work as it progresses,
plus lots of discussion of what I am doing and how I am doing it.
Especially interesting to the woodworker! You
will have the opportunity to see - near real time - how my furniture is
made and share in some of my head scratching as I figure out how to do
new things in the workshop!
This has been a good season for awards. In August, I was awarded
a first place Blue Ribbon in the
46th Annual Art Exhibit of the Rappahannock Art League
for Chest
sans Sides. This is
an interesting piece; with it I had three basic
goals. First, I wanted folks to enjoy seeing hand cut dovetails on
drawers, and I know that some feel it is being a bit forward pulling
out a drawer to see the craft if the piece does not belong to them. So,
I built the chest without sides! The drawers, themselves are the sides,
and it does not take much effort to see all the joinery on the entire
piece. Second, I wanted to incorporate curves, nice graceful ones. Why?
All I can say is that I have been leaning more and more toward curves
in my work and the design for this chest just came to me in a flash one
day. And finally, I wanted the piece to be fully functional. I actually
expected someone to keep socks in the drawers (is that so naive?).
Anyway, by the end of the show, in addition to the Blue Ribbon the
chest had been voted the Viewer's Choice! I consider that a great
honor, since you are the best
critics of an artisans work! Now, the story gets really interesting.
I'm sharp enough to
figure out that if all of you liked the piece, perhaps it could win
other awards, so I entered it in the 2008 Niche Award competition,
sponsored by Niche
Magazine, an esteemed publication that connects galleries and craft
retailers with artisans. A few
weeks ago I learned that I was a finalist
in the Home Furniture category! The winners will be announced at
the Buyers
Market of American Craft in Philadelphia in February. I hope to be
there. You can see the entire process of building this piece on my
website in the Works in Progress section. Just click on this
link. To make
the story complete, the Studio
Gallery in Kilmarnock sold the piece to
a gentleman who truly appreciates my work and had already purchased one
of my more contemporary pieces last year. He did, however, decide not
to store his socks in the drawers, but
instead commissioned me to build a heavy duty 'lazy susan' on which to
mount the chest so it could easily be turned to view from any
direction. What a great idea! As a result of my awards from the
Rappahannock Art
League show, I
was interviewed in the Artline Newsletter in October.
A couple of nice folks I know had been looking for a
pair of night
stands for a long time. They just could not seem to find any that were
exactly the right size, so they asked
me
if I could help. The answer was going to be "of course", but first I
had to see where the nightstands would be living - an important service
I offer is to go into a client's home and work with them to design
the perfect piece. As I recount in my online Works
in Progress page about the tables, they live in a nice house
nestled
in the woods and on the water. With lots of windows, the home has an
airy feel, so heavy tables were out of the question. We settled on some
nice cherry tables with a simple design that included a shelf that used
a very light colored pecan panel. Click here
to see the website page about these tables. If you look hard at the
photo on the site, you will see a very faint hourglass shaped piece of
wood running down the center of the top. This is a piece of red oak,
and when the cherry darkens, as it undoubtedly will, the red oak piece
will stand in pleasing contrast and set off the cherry. This is why I
love studio furniture - I get the chance to incorporate subtle but nice
details that really make the pieces!
I
my last newsletter, I wrote
about a desk
I built for a local client. We were all very pleased with the outcome,
so I decided to enter it in the Custom
Woodworking Business magazine 2008 Design Portfolio Award
competition. This award is given for a custom piece built for a client
and is judged on appearance and quality of construction, with emphasis
on design creativity and functionality. I knew that the desk was
superb, if I do say so myself, but it is often difficult to convey
quality in a photograph, which was all I could submit to the judges.
Fortunately, they liked what they saw and I was notified that the piece
won an Honorable Mention and will be featured in the December 2007
issue of Custom Woodworking Business magazine. Judging from the way
they did things last year, there will be a writeup with photo that can
be viewed at their website. I'll e-mail you all the link when the
website page appears so you can check it out!
Also in my last
newsletter I
told
you about a dining
table I had designed and built for a local couple. It was solid
cherry with a bent laminated 'backbone' of red oak and cherry, and it
had two glass panels for the top. Although it is structurally a very
solid table, it has a very light and organic feel. Well, as a result I
was then commissioned to design and build four chairs
to go with the table. Keeping the style of the table, the chairs had
gentle curves in the legs and incorporated a bent laminated crest rail,
again using cherry and red oak. My client purchased the upholstery
fabric, a beautiful blend of Blue and Gold (Go
Navy! ), and I wrapped that fabric around two inches of foam
and batting to make a very comfortable seat. You can follow the
complete construction of these chairs by clicking on this link.
By the way, when I delivered the chairs I was very pleased to see how
the cherry in the table had aged. It is now the dark honey color that
cherry becomes when exposed to light, and the contrast with the red oak
in the 'backbone' is stunning! I hope to get a photograph of the
completed set to post on my website in the near future.
Every now and
then I get asked
to make something that does not cost a lot of money. Of course, in my
business that means something that does not take a lot of time to make,
since almost all my cost is labor. For me, that presents a problem,
since I never want to compromise on the design and quality of my
pieces. So, I developed a design for a simple box, one that epitomizes
my style. It is a bent laminated design that I call the 'Wave
Box', and after seeing the response to my prototypes I knew I had a
design that folks would like. The first prototype I donated to the
Furniture Society for our
annual silent auction. It was purchased by an accomplished professional
studio furniture maker who said that it was only the third piece built
by another maker that he had ever bought. What a compliment! The second
prototype was likewise donated to the Rappahannock Art League for the
annual Patrons Gala, and it was chosen by a photographer for whom I
hold a great deal of respect. To get the price down into our atmosphere
I made a limited production run of the boxes, in a variety of woods,
and now the price of the box is only $125 (you would not believe the
cost of the prototypes, when I was figuring out how to make a box with
bent laminated, curved sides that would actually fit together right --
whew!). I'll be selling them at the Rappahannock Art League
Studio Gallery Holiday Shop and at the Artisans Center of
Virginia's A
Handmade Season. I'm also saving one box to donate to the
Northumberland Friends of the Library drawing for 2008. Perhaps you can
win one for only a few dollars!
I try to please
whenever I am
asked to make something for someone, but one of my commissions was
indeed unique. I was asked to make display boxes for some artifacts. The
first was a crucifix that was
discovered by my client while diving on a ship wreck. The second
artifact was a pair of
'pieces of eight', silver coins discovered in Panama. When I cleaned
the years of gunk off the coins, they revealed interesting designs and
it was a little uncanny to be holding the stuff of pirate
stories. It was the third artifact, though, that was the
most unusual. A pair of gold nose rings, perhaps once worn by a tribal
leader, and discovered (I was told in all seriousness) actually on
the remains of the original wearer. I'm not kidding. I designed very
simple display boxes for these, and I wrote a Works
in Progress on this commission; you might find it interesting.
All has not been simply work in the shop; I've done
my share of
volunteering, as well. One organization I heavily support is the
Artisans Center of Virginia,
our official state center of craft. In an age of mass production and
imported everything, quality objects made with the care and
love of the maker are becoming more rare. The Artisans Center exists to
keep craft alive, and in addition to providing gallery space in
Waynesboro we provide craft education, exhibitions, and the
like. You may have visited the gallery, or seen our exhibit at the
Virginia State Fair. Please remember that craft lives a fragile
existence today, and your appreciation and support is necessary to keep
it alive. When you are traveling near Waynesboro, or are visiting the
State Fair, please take time to stop by the Artisans Center of Virginia
- you won't be disappointed.