Andrew Pitts
- FurnitureMaker
Workshop Update 2008 No. 1
Hi Folks,
Welcome to my third semi-annual e-mail update. As
clients, friends,
and
supporters
I thought you would be
interested in hearing more about my recent work and furniture
activities! By the way, since this is
an e-mail newsletter, I've linked some 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
remind you of 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! Right now there is an extensive write-up on
a custom piece I am making to house a TV, a snuff bottle collection,
and jewelry. I hope you will find time to browse the pages.
Kathy and I
just
returned
from the Furniture
Society Conference at the State University of New
York in Purchase, New York. This is an annual affair and is a great
professional opportunity for me. The Furniture Society is
a large group of studio furniture makers, collectors, educators,
gallery owners and operators, and
folks who just want to support
quality hand made furniture. At the conference I made new friends,
heard presentations
from the masters in the field, and had a couple of rare opportunities,
myself. I was able to show my Filing
Cabinet in the Member's Gallery, and the piece even made it to the
pages of the Fine
Woodworking.com website (you need to scroll down a little to see the cabinet). I
also was fortunate to have my portfolio reviewed by one of the
country's foremost furniture gallery owners, and I had the opportunity
to make a presentation on milling and drying lumber based on my
experience with my sawmills
and
drying kiln. Perhaps one of the highlights of the week was when
a dear lady
and friend selected my Wave
Box at the silent auction. Some things are just special!
In keeping with
the style of my
Chest
sans Sides, I designed a Filing
Cabinet in the same genre. To be truthful, I had needed a filing
cabinet in the shop
for quite some time, but when it came time to design it I simply could
not make 'just a box'. So, I thought about how to make one that would
be more interesting, and this is what I designed. I also decided to
make two cabinets, one for me and one for someone else. The second
cabinet is still available if you are that someone else! By the way, as
I mentioned I took my cabinet to the Furniture Society conference to
show in the Member's Gallery. One highly respected furniture
professional said
to me that the filing cabinet "stopped her". I like to think that was
meant in a positive way!
One of the more
interesting
ventures this year has been my recent liturgical work. I was commissioned to make a Paschal
Candle Stand, one
of
traditional design for Heathsville United Methodist Church here in
town. This piece is a tall stand meant to hold a candle that is 2
inches in diameter and three feet tall. I was
able to do some neat things with this piece. I was able to use some sycamore wood I
milled from a tree
that had to be taken down on the Church property. And, I was able to
carve interesting designs into the sycamore. Please take a look at the web
page to get a good look at the carvings. As providence would
have it, not a week after posting the candle stand on my
website I received a call from a Lutheran Pastor in St. George, Utah.
He asked if I would design a Paschal
Candle Stand for their new
Sanctuary, and the job quickly grew to
making a Processional
Cross and Stand, as well. These were to be more contemporary in
design
and presented new carving opportunities. I like to think that I
designed pieces that would complement their new Sanctuary well. Also,
there was an unusual
challenge
right from the start as the humidity in Utah is very low, so I had to
dry the stock in the kiln even more than I always do for local East
Coast pieces. I did not want any chance of the pieces
cracking, splitting, or warping in that dry environment. I think the
pieces turned out very well, but then I am a little biased. These were
also the first pieces I shipped commercially, and I was relieved to
learn that they made it to Utah safe and sound.
In my work with
the Artisans
Center of Virginia,
our official state center of craft, I volunteered to head up a
fund raiser we called "An Afternoon with Artisans". On a cold afternoon
in
January we hosted a warm reception at the gallery in Waynesboro. We
sold tickets entitling the bearer and a guest to an afternoon of good
food, drink,
and company, but more importantly each ticket holder went home with a
unique piece of donated craft worth more than the ticket price! We
raised a lot of money to keep our center alive and a lot of people went
home with some nice craft art. You can read more about this event in
the ACV newsletter (which I also edit in my spare time) in the Spring
2008 Issue. As a reminder, when you are traveling near Waynesboro,
or are visiting the
Virginia State Fair, please take time to stop by the Artisans Center of
Virginia
- you won't be disappointed.
I'm about to venture into a new area for me .... I'm
going to teach
classes in my shop! In conjunction with the Rappahannock Art League,
I will be teaching a total of three different two day sessions this
fall. The first two days will center around how to get a shop up and
running, then the later sessions will cover woodworking design and
techniques,
both basic and advanced. The sessions will be demonstrations, only, as
I have only one set of tools and one bench, but I hope that students
will be able to take away good first hand information to apply in their
shops. And I will always be just a phone call away for anyone needing
more help and guidance. I hope that the offerings will be valuable to
some folks. In my next news update I'll tell you how they went!
Best
regards,
Andy Pitts