Twisp of Fate

Over the winter, Rick agreed to make pieces for 3 different shows in the valley this summer, on top of his regular workload.  He was thinking that the first one didn’t open until mid-June.  So it was a bit of a shock when we read the Methow Valley News Summer Guide about 3 weeks ago, and realized that the Garden Art Show at the Methow Valley Inn in Twisp opens this coming weekend – May 12th.

So he went to work on some ideas he has for working with some beautiful wood that has been in the stash for years.  It is Western Bigleaf Maple with lots of character and live edges.  He got it about 10 years ago from a woodworker friend in North Bend, WA, and the friend in turn had it for 17 years (we think).  So the wood was milled and dried for about 25 years, possibly longer. When the pieces were milled out, sanded and finished grain patterns emerged that amazed both of us.

The first piece is this bench, which will go into the Garden Art Show:

It has a natural curve on one edge, which makes for a very comfortable seat.  There is another matching board, not quite as curved, that will become a second bench when he gets time!

Next he went to work on a small table using two matched planks.  It seemed like a natural thing, since he wanted to retain the live edges and all the character in the wood as much as possible, to have the split down the middle – the live edges approach each other but do not quite meet.  The base is similar to the one for the bench, but the stringer runs at a bit of a diagonal because on each leg, one side is wider than the other, and the narrower side is on the left on one leg, and on the right on the other leg.

This table will be shown at the Inside Out show (“an exploration and celebration of designed interior and exterior space, and the objects and forms we use to define them”) which will run from August 3 – September 21 at Confluence Gallery & Art Center in Twisp.

Next up:  a hall table using this beautiful top, which he actually constructed by cutting 2 boards along a diagonal and then gluing together.  That diagonal looks like a fault line running the length of the top. The 2 pieces were cut off of the pieces used to make the benches -  there was a split (or crotch) and these pieces were separate branches.  When removed from the larger slabs they were about two inches wide at one end and nine inches wide at the other end, with a big knot.  Rick thought they would be waste but then realized he could join them end for end and came up with a nine foot long slab with great grain and shape.

This is not the base for the hall table!  Just something to set it on for the picture.  He has an idea, but these things more or less develop as he goes along making them.

The hall table and one other yet-to-be determined piece will be for an exhibit at the Lost River Winery tasting room in Winthrop (they also have a tasting room at the north end of the Pike Place Market in Seattle).  They will be featuring both of our work there for 12 weeks, mid-June through mid-September.  I am calling it “Wine, Weaving & Woodwork”.  So we both have a lot to do to get ready for that!

So far, Rick has used only about a third of the lumber from this tree so there is still the potential for quite a few more pieces.

Last weekend Rick finished and delivered a king-size bed for some clients in the valley.  He did a lot of cabinet work for them last year when they expanded and remodeled their second home on a ridge just north of and above Winthrop.  Since then they have had various furniture projects for him, which makes a nice break from cabinet work.

They had a chair that they purchased at the Pendleton Woolen Mill Store, or one of the outlets.  This is the detail that they wanted Rick to capture in the headboard and footboard of the bed – sort of a “branch” motif.

detail of bedroom chair from Pendleton showroom

He roughed out the shape then finished it with carving chisels.  The frame was dyed and stained maple, to match the chair as closely as possible.  The panels are blued pine from the valley (the blue is a naturally occurring color that happens sometimes in standing dead pine trees – he says it is a mildew that comes along when the wood is starting to rot).

There will be two bedside tables coming up soon, using the same wood combination.