When I look at this image below, posted by a friend of mine, Rick Gabrielly (www.rickgabrielly.com), I can only think, dirty fingers? there is so, so much my clients don’t know about what goes into their product.
When they see their piece (of furniture) for the first time, they’re wowed and express surprise, delight and sometimes shock. If they saw the mess(es) created in the process, if they were witness to the mistakes and the surprises I encounter en route to delivering a one-of-a-kind knockout, I wonder if they’d be more appreciative of the value of their piece. Dirty fingers, while graphic, is a very small part of the picture.
I realize that what I deal in is kind of magical: taking a concept from an idea to a line drawing to an actual, ‘real’, solid product of solidly joined wood is nothing short of miraculous and I am awed every time it happens. When I embark upon producing a design, it is like a journey: I have a pretty good idea of where I’m going and how it will turn out, but there are no guarantees. The wood I buy and invest hours of my life and labor into might just as well end up as firewood as an heirloom.
That’s both the spur and the reward. In a piece of finely designed, built and finished furniture, the tracks are hidden; no struggle is apparent. I can promise you, though: what looks easy actually was years in the making.
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