Hammer and Nails

Here is a step of the process that I'm hesitant to show due to my poor drawing skills. I feel that it's an important step to show because woodworking isn't always sharp tools on wood that makes a completed project. It's a culmination of different skills, experiences and time standing at the bench that goes into something. I often get asked how long does it take to make a chair? I think what people want is a nice clean answer like 60 hours. But it’s a result of a long-career and many many mistakes to learn the craft of design as well as the technical expertise. The reality is I started making that chair when I was 9 years old when I first grabbed dad's hammer and a can of nails and went out to build a tree fort.

Stolar

Nina Chair.
Photo. Tib Shaw. 

One of my inspirations for the grant was the desire to have relaxing, uninterrupted, intentional meals similar to the meals I would experience while staying with friends in Northern Europe. Even the simplest of meals weren’t rushed. Mealtime was more about conversation, food was like the side dish.

One component to having a long meal is to have comfortable seating. I’ve always been interested in seating and while on a trip in 2013 visiting Willie Sundqvist I was inspired to make chairs.  In his kitchen were simple blue chairs that he said where over 150 years old and had never been repaired. When you sat in it, it didn’t give; it made me think about our disposable society and how things are no longer made to last, stand the test of time, or even be comfortable. So for the last three years I have been studying  chair making and have wanted to make that chair with a comfortable seat (or called the “sit”). To start understanding chair joinery, the first chair I made was the classic American Windsor, from there I worked on my own designs and made the chair I currently call the “Norma”. 

Norma Chair
Photo, Tib Shaw.

In 2015 I saw  an opportunity to study with Beth Moen at Säterglänten on making a chair starting with a log, “Log to Chair” was the title. I signed up as soon as I found out about the class, another opportunity to study time tested joinery. Not only did I want to learn how to make this Swedish style of chair, I wanted to learn from Beth because she is an incredible craftsperson.

Säterglänten is a school in Sweden that teaches hand-craft or sloyd. I had been there once before to take a class with Jögge Sundqvist and knew from prior travel that shipping anything home was expensive, especially anything large like a chair.

The first thing I did when I got to central Sweden was to find a “loppis” -  a Swedish version of our garage sale. I was looking for the largest suitcase I could find to use as my luggage for the trip home. I traveled with only a backpack and so adding a suitcase wouldn’t have an extra charge on my return flight home with a checked bag.

The first day of class was spent designing our chair based off a century old design Beth had shown us. I should note that all classes at Säterglänten are taught in Swedish and I had to use the metric system to lay-out and build it, I actually found it easier than using our system.  I also learned to draw dual perspectives,where front view and side view are overlapping on the same page. It was trippy but once I figured it out, it was a way of checking to see if you made each perspective correct.  Besides esthetics and strength, I had one more design consideration - how to fit all the parts in this suitcase -Ikea style.

The next three days were all about hand joinery, steam bending, and fika, lots of work using only hand tools, except a bandsaw to rough out the parts. Many of us worked until 9:00 in the evening just to stay on task but by early afternoon on Friday I had my chair into the suitcase. 

White Pine

As I was thinking about the material that I wanted to use to build the table, I kept coming back to White Pine. I only wanted to use two planks for the top so I needed something that grew to a large diameter. I thought, “what would people in Telemark Norway use to build a table?”  Rauland is just below the tree line and any tree large enough for this wide a plank would need to be a conifer - any other tree wouldn’t get big enough. So White Pine it is.  It’s my favorite of all the conifers, it smells great, and it’s easy to work. 

I had been looking for wood this large even before I received the grant.  A large portion of Minnesota used to be covered with White Pine but now it is rare; wood this size just doesn’t grow on trees (couldn’t resist).  By chance, I asked a friend if he knew of some large planks for making a table of this size. I couldn’t believe my luck that the material that I was looking for was just a few miles away. He had 3 pieces of White Pine 4” thick, 24” wide, and 16’ long. More than enough for the table and the carved panels.

The table at Gardsjord.

When I looked at the Gardsjord table I could see centuries of wear, generations of stories. The exhibit  “At the Table” is about stories and communication, so having a wood that will wear well, receive marks and scratches when someone sets a ceramic cup or plate down or drops their fork,  tells its own story and gives it character over time.

Prototype of the table I will be making for the exhibit.

DESIGN
                                                                       

To begin the table, I started out sketching ideas of shapes that would best facilitate conversation for eight people. I looked at squares, circles, trapezoids, ovals and ovoids. Nothing felt right.

I went back to my old sketchbooks and started looking,

I found  a recurring theme, its the slightest curve. Think of a blade of grass or stalk of wheat yielding to the softest summer breeze. I see it everywhere, it catches my eye and often stops me in my tracks. It’s recurring in nature: a gentle wave, the curve of a worn stone, the profile of a leaf. I also see it in the human form.

Laying out the curve

As I drew and focused on that curve, the shape of the boat - particularly a pram, a Norwegian pram to be exact - emerged in the design I wanted to pursue.

I liked the idea of a boat and the connection to the boats that are depicted in the paintings of Herbjorn Gausta, a Norwegian immigrant painter and a cousin of my mother. 

Herbjorn Gausta, Vesterhiem Collection

Last summer I spent just over a week in Rauland, Norway, at the farm of my ancestors, along the shores of Lake Totak.  There are wooden boats along the shore, that are slowly rotting back into the earth.

When I think about those boats, and my family rowing in them to fish or go across the lake to visit neighbors, I can’t help but feel a connection.  I hear the stories, I look at how boats defined and connected the community around the lake and took families to church.  The boat was the vehicle to physically bring people together, so to have that same shape of a boat define the table seemed like a good fit in bringing people together At the Table.

Lake Totak  Rauland, Norway.

At the Table

                    

 Gardsjord
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 Illustration from Johan Meyer's 1906 book, Fortids Kunst i Norges Bygder. 

I am a 2016 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. The grant will allow me to build a dinner setting that is inspired by my visit last year to my ancestors farm “Gardsjord”, in Rauland, Norway. The setting will consist of a table, seating for eight, and dinnerware for serving, plates, cups, bowls etc.... Along with the table setting I will make three large carved panels approximately two feet by seven feet. The panels are representative of the large carved panels that are on the outside of the house in Rauland.  During the installations in the galleries, the free standing panels will serve as a way to define the space as the dining area.

What Gardsjord looks like today.

 The public component to each installation will be a dinner that is pot-luck style. Each of the participants will be asked to bring a dish that is accompanied by a story and so each dish will act as a conversation piece for the individual. 

A view from Gardsjord of Lake Totak.

My hope with this blog is to show the process of making the exhibit through images and to share some stories along the way. If you are going to be in northern Minnesota this year I will be working from my studio in Grand Marais - stop by, I’d love to show you the progress. 

The view from Falkeriset.

To the left is the island of Kromviki where my relatives lived until the late 1800's. To the far right you can see a little sliver of water that is Lake Totak where some of my relatives live today.