I’ve changed my wordpress theme to a much lighter look (DePo Masthead by Derek Powazek) and thought I’d post a few links to some earlier, favorite pieces I’ve posted about in the past. Click on an image for links to the posts.
Armoire base by Todd Fillingham
Wisconsin Historical Society
I’ve started a new blog that will carry my posts about Milwaukee’s 3 rivers and my scheme to introduce small boats to folks who live along it. I transferred my earlier post that I originally posted on this blog and have a new post up. Here’s the link (click on the image below)-
I’ll still be posting about lots of other things on this blog so don’t go away.
I had intended to post part II of the Three Rivers series before posting about anything else, but it has been some time since I’ve posted about furniture and I’ve just finished this new piece so I thought I’d sneak this post in now.
We needed a table of just the right height to hold a fan in our bedroom window at home. Although I am in the midst of a pretty big project just now I thought I’d check out a few of my scrap piles to see if there was anything there to inspire me.
And, while I was at it, maybe I’d check out the paint locker and see what was lurking in there.
Here’s what caught my eye:
A couple of pieces of MDF, some interesting walnut cut-offs and a nice green latex paint.
I glued up the MDF pieces into a block 1-1/2″ thick-
Cut the walnut cut-offs to a uniform length-
Then drew a pleasing curve to shape the legs.
I cut out the first leg, used it as a pattern to trace out the other two, cut them on the bandsaw and sanded the curved cut.
Next I created a guide for my router to cut out the mortises into the top that would hold the legs.
The legs were rounded over on the router table on the long straight face.
I used a variety of implements to draw out a pattern for the top, created a template for 1/2 of the top, transferred that shape onto the top, flipping over the template to get the other half so that the curves would be symmetrical and shaped the top.
I wanted to create an interesting joint detail where the legs met the top. I did some sketching and decided that the top should have its bottom edge rounded. This was done on the big shaper, a finger chewing machine if there ever was one.
I managed to get the top rounded with out loosing any fingers and proceeded to cut the mortises on the under side of the top using the jig I had created earlier.
I adjusted the fit of the legs into the mortises by carefully sanding down their final thickness.
You can start to see what this table will look like at this stage. I still need to square off the round corners left by the router bit in the mortises. I did this by hand using a sharp chisel.
Now I was able to see if the joint detail came out like I had hoped.
OK, this was what I wanted. A look as if the legs were cradling the top. This is reminiscent to me of the original tripod that held a bowl or tray from eons ago.
And here’s the table before finishing:
I painted the top, glued in the legs, rubbed on some of my special oil/ varnish mix and the table was complete.
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google maps
Milwaukee was built at the confluence of three rivers on the shore of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic . At present there are 9 miles navigable by small craft before reaching the protected harbor. There is an additional 27 miles or so accessible by canoe or kayak up the Milwaukee River to the dam at Bridge Street in Grafton, Wisconsin.
The three rivers have been used for commerce and recreation for a long time.
Wisconsin Historical Society
Wisconsin Historical Society
Wisconsin Historical Society
When I first saw the three rivers commerce had dominated for enough time to have turned them into something just short of open sewers. This was in the mid 1960’s, when I moved here with my sister to finish high school and live at our father’s house. Buildings along the river fronts had their backs to the rivers, waste was dumped directly into them. The rivers stank much of the time. River front property was less valuable for being on the river.
Around 1967 I took a part time job at the Knickerbocker Hotel Pharmacy, just north of downtown. It was one of those opportunities to experience a very colorful side of Milwaukee. The notorious Sally’s Supper Club shared the ground floor of the hotel with the pharmacy. Working there cracked open a chink through which I saw a world that was slowly dying and I was intrigued and scared by its shadows. This was the last of a seamy Milwaukee of cheap hoods, organized crime, systematic exploitation and violence.
It was in this world that my boss, the owner of the pharmacy operated. I cannot remember his name now, so I’ll call him Mr. K. The straits he was in by the time I was hired were never fully known to me. His swollen face, stooped stance and scurrying gait though were signals of much that lay unseen. He must have been seriously indebted to someone and he had to hustle to stay afloat.
I felt sympathy for this over worked man. He was fair to his employees and never indulged in the exploitation the milieu he was immersed in would have found natural. As a matter of fact he would often give quiet warnings of traps to gingerly step around, such as gifts that were anything but what they seemed. There were times when it was best not to leave the drugstore counter, at least not until the big Cadillacs had left the street in front of Sally’s. Men in garrish suits would hang out in the soda fountain area around lunch time or on a lazy Sunday afternoon occasionaly making very sexist remarks about the waitress, sometimes bidding her to sit with them to discuss certain propositions. The drug store filled orders that I often delivered by dropping off inside a screen door, under no circumstances was I to knock. A young women’s residence was around the corner and on occasion I was told to deliver a couple of six packs of beer and “you don’t need to hurry back [wink, wink]” to one of the dorm rooms there . Mr. K. would get irate though about delivering boxes of condoms to another “apartment” in the neighborhood. Somehow he had a more mellow attitude about the daily delivery of a half pint of cheap brandy and a package of Depends to a resident of the hotel (that was a very quick delivery).
Maybe he sensed my nascent grasp of his predicament and maybe my naive sympathy. Maybe I was just a person that would listen. Whatever the reason he began to tell me about his youth and this reflection distracted him from the trap he was in. I was amazed to hear about the days he spent swimming in the Milwaukee River, about the majestic swimming pavilions and the boats that would be rowed on the river to lazy picnics along the bank.
Wisconsin Historical Society
Wisconsin Historical Society
Mr. K. also told of the farms 1/2 block from where I was living at the time. That land had been “developed” into housing quite awhile earlier and I had never thought of it as farmland. The contrast between that pastoral land and river of his memory and the city I lived in was astounding to me.
I worked at that drugstore a couple of years and moved on. I went to college at UWM and got a degree in independant film making. I travelled some, was part of a travelling film and dance production (1/2 of it to be exact) and eventually wound up living in an old log cabin just north of the city of Milwaukee for a couple of years.
I had always sailed on Lake Michigan. I moved back into the city, right into the heart of downtown, and my girlfriend (soon to be wife) and I bought an old wooden sailboat which we sailed around Lake Michigan, storing it in a boat yard up the Kinnickinnic River over the winters.
Our boat tied up along the KK River
I had never forgotten Mr. K.’s stories about the rivers of his youth though, yet I found it hard to reconcile those stories with the rivers I saw up close from our boat. The waters were filthy, and even though you would see the occassional musk rat swimming, more often you were likely to see a dead animal floating downstream.
And this wasn’t necesarily the safest place to keep a boat. There were gangs that motored up the river and would steal anything of value from any and all boats tied up along the banks. A group of us boat owners, particularly owners of boats of a certain vintage tended to watch out for each other’s boats and would have small parties and cookouts along our makeshift docks. We were on a part of the river that could be described as a desolate industrial wasteland.
An aside: As a matter fact, it was few years earlier that I used that area as the scene for a series of photographs I took and submitted as a non-written term paper about the Italian film maker Michelangelo Antonioni. I was particularly interested in his early, neorealist work. You can get idea of what I’m talking about by seeing this screen shot from his film Il deserto rosso (1964).
I have always been an artist, besides dabbling in film and earning a living at furniture design, furniture making and carpentry. Twenty years ago Milwaukee held a celebration of the rivers that run through it. A celebration that, it was hoped, would change Milwaukee’s view of and attitude toward the rivers. I participated as a sculptor and created a floating sculpture for the event. It was an attempt to add a bit of “jewelry” to the rivers, honor and celebrate what could be. I created a pretty wild looking canoe form.
Canoe Form by Todd Fillingham 1989
I set up a small display describing the project then floated up and down the Milwaukee River during the celebration in this canoe. It was a small effort, more of a gesture I guess, but it was part of the beginning of a major change in Milwaukee.
More to come in this series.
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The delivery date nears and I still want to apply a few more coats of finish so it looks like, once again, I won’t be able to take the time to properly photograph a piece before it leaves the shop.
I have been building up the polyurethane finish to a point which I can then sand it flat.
At this point the table is ready for the final coats.
Although these shots don’t really show it there is a subtle wood grain showing through.
Here’s the table with two more coats to go.
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With the veneers glued on I do some final trimming of the top.
I use sharp chisels with masking tape applied the areas that will ride along the face adjacent to the veneer being trimmed so that I only cut what needs to be trimmed. A sharp knife and guide board also comes in handy.
I then use a card scraper to flatten the veneers.
Once everything is as flat as possible without scraping through the veneer to the paper backing beneath I apply a black dye and start building up the layers of polyurethane finish.
This process will take some time and will require a few adjustments as it progresses. I’ve started with gloss polyurethane varnish to build up the base coats but will finish with a semi-gloss finish. It is important to keep the shop, or at least this area of it, as dust free as possible while the varnish dries.
Part 4 is here. Part 2 is here.
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Some time ago a delightful young lady called my studio. She had an idea for a table she wanted but had become very frustrated in trying to find aomeone that would make the table for her. I invited her in to the studio and she layed out her idea for me. It was very challenging. She wanted the table to be completely supported by two glass panels.
I thought it over and developed a rough idea about how it could be accomplished. My price came in considerably higher than her budget for this project however. I offered to lower my price if she would handle the purchasing of the glass. We also agreed that the project would be put on hold until she was able to save enough money for it. I believe it was a year later that she called back and was ready to proceed.
Along with the chairs she found here is the result.
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So, the “machine” turned this:
into this:
And this is the lower part of the table. A top will be added to this. Then I will apply the veneers. In this case I am using maple veneers on a paper backing.
Each piece of veneer is trimmed to prepare for the next piece on the adjacent face.
I am using a very sharp, rather flat carving gouge to trim the veneer. One wrong move and… well it’s not worth thinking about at this stage.
I don’t use a vacuum bag to clamp these veneers, primarily because I don’t have the set up. Instead I use just about every trick in the clamping book.
I am using weights, clamps (shop made and store bought) and long spring sticks that go up to the ceiling. I have a product known as kerf-board ontop of the veneer to help spread the clamping pressure. The most important thing is the glue I use. It is made for applying this particular kind of veneer, that is, paper backed veneer. It is a water based contact cement that you set by applying hand pressure with something known as a veneer hammer. The glue needs to be “dry stacked”, that is, have some pressure applied, for 24 hours after you use the veneer hammer, so that is what all of this in the above picture is about.
Just before writing this I just finished applying the final piece of veneer, the top piece, and will post the final finishing steps soon.
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I’m finishing a project that was originally commissioned exactly one year ago. It got delayed because the end user wanted to have a chair re-upholstered and wanted to be sure that this table came out to the exact same height as the arm of the chair. The upholsterer took quite a while to get that job done so even though I had been given the deposit, had completed the drawings, had started making the tooling required and had purchased some of the materials I was told to hold off until the chair was done.
This table is a pedestal with curved sides veneered in maple, dyed black and finished with a polyurethane semi-gloss finish. Here’s a screen grab from the design I created.
This design was based on a table my client, an interior designer, found elsewhere and asked me to modify to suit the end user.
I decided to carve the shape out of stacked MDF board. I had done this before, for the same client and end user actually, on a piece that was finished by Catherine Lottes.
I started by making two stacks.
Then glued the 2 halves together.
To create the shape from the glued up stack, the work piece, I designed a “machine” to guide a grinder with a cutter attached. I used my Rhino program to design the machine.
The work piece is shaped on one face then the machine is taken apart and the work piece is rotated 90 degrees about the vertical axis (vertical when the table is standing upright) and the machine is put back together around the work piece to carve the next face. The grinder that spins the cutter is fixed to a piece of PVC pipe that rides on guides attached to the carriage. The carriage in turn rides on rails from side to side. I can easily lift the cutter assembly out as well as slide the carriage out to access the work piece for final sanding.
Here’s the machine in action.
Some interesting textures are created in this process and I would like to make a table using this process that would retain the texture in some way.
See part 2 for the next phase of the making of this table.
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I have a hard time shooting pictures of some of my art work. The pictures never quite show what I see. I suppose that’s a common complaint among amature photographers. Just the other day I discovered a way to shoot some of my work in a way that I really like.
I realized that I don’t interact with my work from a distance and see the work in a static view. No, I walk around or past each piece. Sometimes my eye catches one or two elements. Sometimes I get drawn into fragments. So I started shooting details of some of my pieces, isolating parts from the whole. For some pieces it works nicely.
Detail from painted table base by Todd Fillingham.
Detail from paper table by Todd Fillingham
This last image is a little off-putting I think. It is really not out of focus, this is how the print looks on the table base.
Another way that seems to work for me to shoot some of my work is to include some of the context or enviroment that the piece is in. Sometimes I like the environment to be a little undefined. Here’s a sketch for a carving.
Drawing by Todd Fillingham for a carving done in mahogany.
Resin nude on Paper Base Table, both by Todd Fililngham
And sometimes just shooting the piece in room it is shown in when the light is just right is OK.
Boy With Kite by Todd Fillingham
And this last piece I had to “photoshop” the background.
Resin, wire and cloth figure by Todd Fillingham
I’ll get back to that post about the next table I’m working on soon.
Oops, I wanted to add this painting as well.
…since I’ve last posted.
I have been working on such a number of interesting projects. There’s one, really interesting one that has been mostly in the planning stages. I’ll have to wait just a little longer before I can post about it. But, I’ve been busy in shop as well.
I’ve been working on a couple of tables for a long time client. Both of these are headed for my client’s Florida home. The first one is a very large coffee table. It measures 88″ by 55″. But the wild thing about it is that it is not flat. The top is wavy.
Todd cutting the table to size.
Here I am cutting of the end of the glued up butternut planks. The table was too big to run through my table saw and a sharp handsaw works just as well.
The planks had a natural curve to them so during glue up I took as much advantage of this as possible.
Carving the surface with disc grinder.
Here you can see some of the waviness. The table was so large and heavy that I had to plan my work to minimize how often I turned the piece over. I carved out the bottom face first then flipped it using a block and tackle.
I used a number of tools to shape the top. Here are a few, ready at hand.
The final sanding was very tedious, but since this table was to be varnished with a gloss spar varnish it was very important. I spent a lot of time carefully sanding the top.
Careful sanding was a must.
The table is wrapped in blankets now and I haven’t taken any pictures of the final finish. I’ll try and get to that before the trucking company shows up.
Update: I found s few more images.
One of the base units being fit to the table top.
This and the next picture is of the table upside down as the two boxes that act as the base for the table are being fit to the wavy underside of the table top.
The 2 base boxes being fit.
The next project was another table with curves, for the same clients. That’ll be in the next post.
Update 2: I pulled back the blankets and took a picture of the finished table top.
I’m making a table out of butternut. Some components have to be glued up edge to edge before further work. In order to get the edges to match for a glue joint I run the edges over my jointer. A set of knives on the rotating cutter head cut the wood to create a smooth edge.
I was having some trouble getting the edges to match nicely and I wanted to get a pair glued up right away so I was tempted to forge ahead. Instead I stopped everything, unplugged the jointer and set about re-adjusting the knives.
The work piece is pushed from this end of the jointer with it’s face tight against the vertical fence. The fence should hold the piece so that the knives cut square to the face. That is if the knives are adjusted to be parallel to the in feed and out feed tables, the two surfaces on either side of the cutter head.
You can see the in feed table to the right in the image above, I’ve dropped it some to gain access to the screws that hold the cutter knives in the cutter head. The out feed table is on the left side of the image.
The adjustments are made as a fixture magnetically holds the knives just right.
Once the jointer was adjusted correctly I was able to cut the joints easily and they went together with a sweet, satisfying whisper of a “thwump” as the cushion of air escaped perfectly evenly.
Such a satisfying sound. The joints will be sound, the effort was worth it. The pieces go on to my glue up rack.
I’ve been surfing lately. It’s the season around here, as the weather systems start dropping down out of Canadian cold and blow across the still warm lake. A good friend of mine and award winning film maker, Ryan Bigelow, put together a quick video of his session this morning along with some shots of a session from a few days ago. My son is featured which is very nice for me. I made it in just after they left this morning.
Click either image to go to the video.
I walked into my studio this morning and was struck by the colors that seem to have infiltrated it.
Whoaa what happened here? I’m really not a big fan of these pastels, much less this triadic scheme. But there they were.
The boat was something I bought a year ago. I bought it because I have some questions about that particular design. It’s called a Car Topper. It was designed by the innovative and somewhat eccentric boat design Phil Bolger. “Dynamite” Harold Payson has written about building them and sells the plans. This boat was built by the father of a friend of mine. I had been thinking of building it myself but the price was right for this one so I bought it. It needs restoring and I have yet to get around to that.
Anyway, my friend’s father painted that boat those colors. I suppose he may have been thinking of tropical pastels or something. Something like the way houses are painted through out the Caribbean. I don’t know. The odd thing is that my friend is an artist, a pretty well known artist who has many public art commissions in his portfolio and is known for his use of colors in his sculptures.
The surfboard is in for repairs. It’s a Robert August design and was shaped for the surfer I eventually bought it off of. Same color scheme as the boat! What is it about those colors?
Take a look at a color wheel. It’s set up based on the three primary colors arranged equidistant around a circle. That’s 120 degrees apart, which is what is meant by triadic colors, they are 120 degrees apart on the color wheel. Using triads creates a high energy kind of buzz of a color scheme. Adding white tones that down somewhat and shifts the scheme towards a pastel look but it still cries out for attention to me. Hey mahn, look ‘a me mahn, I’m over he-ah. Or something.
I’ve been thinking a long time about getting into boat building professionally. I’ve built a few boats in the past for fun or as the need arose, but now I’m looking to build boats for others. It’s a very daunting prospect. I realized a while ago that I needed to learn a lot more about boats and boat building before attempting this. I’ll be posting more on all this in coming posts. One of the reasons I bought the Car Topper was to do some initial tests on the water and to get my hands on a boat about that size. I’ve moved into a very different direction since buying it and am going to build a very traditional design, lapstrake boat but I still plan to restore this boat and use it for odd jobs around the water.
The surfboard is being repaired where an earlier repair, done before I got the board, failed a few days ago. I was out on some pretty decent sized waves, the first waves of any size for a long time around here. It’s been a very flat summer. About an hour and a half into the session, as I was paddling out and ducking into an oncoming wave as it broke over me I had my hand on the rail and could feel it flex and as it did I felt a crack open up. Not good.
I took the board into the studio a couple of days later (luckily I have another board that I used or the clean up session the next day, which BTW was awesome!) and inspected the damage. An old plug of pink builder’s foam had worked loose and created the crack. I had to grind down quite a lot of the rail, fill with epoxy and micro balloons and have just layered in some fiber glass cloth and resin. It should be ready in a couple of days.
I’m still working through a lot of material on boat building but hope to be starting a boat in a week or so. The surf season is starting here so I’ll be quite busy for some time. I’ve got a new coffee table design I’ll be showing here as soon as I get it rendered the way I want and I’ve been commissioned to build another coffee table to be shipped down to Florida. Did I say I was going to be busy?
Way before Photoshop was ever conceived of I use to spend some time in a dark room I put together while still a high school student. I would shoot 35mm black and white tri-x or pan-x film (terms of antiquity), develop the negatives then work at creating a print. I tried to make the prints evocative of the shape and patterns of the world around me. This was when I was approaching adulthood and a lot of the world seemed to swirl around me in a meaningless way. Maybe I was creating beacons for an older me. It would be nice to think that after so many years. Ego beacons bobbing up occasionally to tweak my normal, obsessively linear view of time.
I ran across an old acquaintance on Facebook and remembered that I had a few old images that he may want to see. While rummaging about to find them I came across several others from that era. This is one. One that I had created in the darkroom. It has it’s fair share of faults I guess but they show that it was hand crafted.
A lot was going on back then especially around that park. It’s a long story, but people were hurt, arrested, the cops rioted. I don’t know the woman in the foreground but her expression seemed to sum up some of what was going on. I scanned the print just as I found it, I didn’t even take it out of the old album page for fear of damaging it.
Once I put it on the scanner I realized that I was about to make some choices that would effect this new version of this old image. A couple of images had been formed on negative film. I chose the paper and exposure, dodging and burning to create the print, showed it around for a while then slid it into a page in an album. Years later I’m back to deciding how it will look again. I suppose your monitor affects the image you are seeing. Since I’m making choices I could “correct” some spots, old marks and flares, white fossils of a loose hair and lithe puddles from developer and fixer. No, I’ll pretend that this is a true representation of what I hold in my hand.
Once scanned I can zoom in. I see a pattern in a detail that I had never seen before.
Brachia like shadows across her face pattern her expression.
And reach down her neck and throat. Tattoo foreshadow? Something tactile in this image, a smooth surface covered in random texture. Marshall McLuhan wrote of this phenomena, the frisson created. He referred to fishnet stockings on a smooth leg. This is more ominous. It is with trepidation that one approaches adulthood. A knighthood of sorts, not to be taken lightly. Nevertheless a font from which so much will and has flowed.
For the last 3 weeks I’ve been connecting with a group of teenagers as they learn about water, boats and the making of boats. The Milwaukee Community Sailing Center asked me to help in a summer program along with a group called Teen Approach. I was to provide what was needed to have the young people build and then ride in a boat. I had done a similar workshop last year.
I was to work with the teens and volunteers and a staff member from the Teen Approach program in the afternoons for 7 days. During the mornings instructors from Milwaukee Community Sailing Center (MCSC) taught the kids how to sail out on Lake Michigan.
I considered several designs and chose to stay with the design of the boats we built last year, a design called the “6 Hour Canoe”. An optimistic name that provides that sometimes critical ingredient needed in any challenging venture.
I prepared several pieces the week before the class so that the project could flow smoothly and be accomplished within the short time frame. We initially started with 6 students, various scheduling conflicts winnowed the core group to 4 by the time the boat was launched.
MCSC provided a shop space for us to work and this was how far we got by the end of the 3rd day.
The gunwales as well as the chine logs were clamped into place with dry wall screws as the epoxy thickened with cotton fibers that forms the adhesive we used through-out sets up. This meant a lot of screws were driven in and a lot of screws were removed. “Not the screws again!”
Soon the boat builders were fitting the bottom onto the upturned hull.
Once the outline had been traced the cutting could begin.
At this point we were down to 5 builders and they each took a turn using the jig saw while the others held the work piece in place, offered advice or took some time to absorb what it was they were doing.
The boat has nice lines. The boat builders sealed any exposed end grain with epoxy resin and filled any gaps and all screw holes with an epoxy filler. Lots of sanding brought the boat to a smooth enough surface for painting.
Sanding was one of the steps that the builders seemed to enjoy the most. Bending in and gluing the gunwales was an early step, a dramatic step and a somewhat tense step. They seemed relieved once the process became predictable. They also started taking ownership of the project, realizing that they were close to accomplishing quite a feat.
Soon the major, local media showed up…
…and the builders found an eloquence that was very refreshing, but not really surprising as they were being interviewed.
More paint!
As one coat dried I took a poll to see how many of them thought their boat would float. Four out of five maintained the optimism we started with. The fifth relished his outsider position for a short while before joining in to form a consensus.
There was some mixed opinions however when I asked them why it would float. Gravity was considered, the fact that wood floats was a popular view point, but there was a certain amount of doubt about the answer. Another break in the action as the paint dried allowed an opportunity to fill a large bucket with water and get down to some serious experimentation. We were able to discover the concept of displacement by using a shop made measuring device (a scrap of wood and a pencil) and we were able to witness a small plastic tub float until filled with water. The plastic tub, quickly known as a boat, was able to carry quite a number of stones without sinking but displacing ever more water, until of course the large rock appeared. It’s always good to check for the limits.
The force of the displaced water on our plastic boat could easily be felt and soon issues regarding the difference of weight and mass were being bandied about until another consensus was agreed upon about the weight of the water displaced and the weight of any vessel. OK, we could feel safe that the boat would float based on more than a democratic vote over the matter.
Now, the really important part needed to be resolved. Two parts actually, the boat’s name and it’s decoration.
The name was decided to be “Teen Approach”, the name of the summer program they attended, but also there was some mention of their own approach. Purple waves were added by some drawing an outline in pencil, another darkening the outline with a marker, a painter wielding a big brush and another with a small.
Screw eyes were added to attach light line that would hold in inflatable racing buoys that worked well for the additional flotation required by those who happened to have been sitting behind some desk indoors while the colloquium on displacement was being held. Tomorrow would be the launch.
The crew had dwindled to four by that time.
But…
…these seasoned shipwrights had brought along a contingent from the rest of the Teen Approach program to witness the launch and provide some labor for hauling the boat to the water.
The good ship was brought to the water.
And launched!
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -absolutely nothing- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing…”
-Kenneth Grahame
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I’ve been fortunate enough to have been commissioned to design and make a number of furniture pieces in the Biedermeier style. This is somewhat unusual in that my studio is located in the Midwest (of the North American continent). The one style that has been consistently popular in this region has been Arts & Crafts. It’s always pleasant to explore styles of other periods and regions.
The Biedermeier style evolved from the economic and political changes that swept Europe in the first half of the 19th century. Often thought of as a response to the French Empire style it has been characterized as resulting from the growth of the bourgeoisie in German speaking regions of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. As with many efforts to shake off the old and make a change some of the furniture that emerged from this era was awkward and clunky.
As a designer and craftsperson I sought to avoid the poorly proportioned and unbalanced look and try and discover elements of the Biedermeier style that were graceful. One of the first that struck me when studying Biedermeier furniture was the use of veneers in a way that tied a piece, particularly cabinetry, together into a unified whole. It is sometimes called a waterfall affect in which the grain is matched through all elements of a face and around onto the top. A detail from a piece I created can show this march of the grain.
I added red arrows to help illustrate this affect. You may be able to see it as well in this full image of the piece.
Even though the various parts and sections of the casework were not all aligned onto the same frontal plane, as if projected onto a flat screen, the use of the veneer grain contributed to what I see as a very modern look. It has a look as if the parts were punched out of one sheet of material and then folded around to create a three dimensional case. I also sometimes see it as if pigment was poured over the piece and allowed to drip down the front. Because it is the natural grain it is very naturalistic and at the same time very graphic. Perhaps this is why I often think of the Biedermeier style as a transitional style. It is by no means at a dead end. It is pointing to modernism.
By the way, it is not altogther clear where the term Biedermeier comes from. Joseph Aronson in his “Encylopedia of Furniture” from Crown Publishers 1965 says “[t]he name derives from a comic-paper character, Papa Biedermeier, symbol of homely substantial comfort and well-being –Gemutlichkeit.” And Hakan Groth says, “The term ‘Biedermeier’ is often wrongly assumed to be the name of a cabinetmaker or designer of the period. During the late 1840s in Austria and Germany, the preceding era (1815-1847) was subject to a barrage of satire, which finally led to the very furniture being mocked.” I have also seen reference to a fictional, comic poet named Biedermeier. It is clear however that this style did veer into regions that were easily mocked. Without jumping into an extended discussion about absolute values of design I will say that I wanted to work with the elements of Biedermeier style that could be brought together with a sense of proportion, balance and grace.
At the time I was exploring Biedermeier design I was doing almost all of my design work on paper in pencil and sometimes watercolor and colored pencil. Here is drawing of a chair I designed followed by a picture of the final piece.
In as much as the Biedermeier style was a reaction to the much more, perhaps, pompous Empire style it used a very similar vocabulary. It was far from revolutionary. It sought to adjust and perhaps contain some of the excesses the emerging bourgeoisie felt were beyond the pale. Among some of the elements that were retained and sometimes re-interpreted was the use of black to contrast with the grain of the fruit woods commonly used. Gone were the gold and the gilt however, except perhaps as discreet functional accents such as pulls. Another element retained was the column, that reference to Roman dominance and power. The Roman column was also and quite likely even more a symbol of stability. And it was in the use of the column that I was able to start to work out the proportions that I would use. For the columns used in western European design derive from the classical orders of Greek and Roman architecture.
There is a great reference book that I use quite a lot, “Cabinet Making and Millwork, Tools Materials Layout Construction” by Alf Dahl (who at the time was Head of the Building Trades Department of the Los Angeles Trade-Technical Junior College) and J. Douglas Wilson (who at one time was the curriculum supervisor for Trades and Industries at the Los Angeles City Schools), originally published in 1953 by the American Technical Society. In just over 300 pages this classic comprehensively covers and amazing amount of material. I may do a post just about this one book one day. For now I want to introduce two illustrations found in the book that show the classical orders and how proportions for various elements are derived from the diameter (D in the figures) of the column.
There are many ways to approach proportion and balance in design. Using the classical orders seemed appropriate historically when designing Biedermeier style furniture although it wasn’t always practical. All of this work was custom design work and as such I had to take into account the view of two clients in this case, the interior designer I was working with and the end user client. Sometimes I had to adjust proportions to meet the functional needs of my clients. I always try to do this adjustment within some coherent framework. In some cases I work with the proportions ascribed by the Golden Mean and have found that much of the architecture derived from the classical orders also relates to the proportions derived from the Golden Mean. Much has been written about the Golden Mean. All I will do here is draw your attention to a very interesting book on the subject by Gyorgy Doczi, “The Power of Limits, Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art & Architecture” published in 1981 by Shambala press.
Here is a study I did for a proposed design for the desk pictured above.
The proposed column design is drawn horizontally across the top, many of the other proportions were derived from this element.
Another piece from this series was this large armoire, the base is shown at the top of this post.
The bedroom set was completed by two night stands and a bed.
This is a detail of the column base for the bed.
Another project that was related to the Biedermeier style of furniture I was fortunate to work on was a dining table I designed and made to go with a set of antique Biedermeier chairs a client had purchased. The interior designer I worked with on this project and the client had seen a table that they wanted to go with the chairs. The table had a solid top and they were looking for a glass top so they approached me. They gave me a small clipping of a small section of the carved legs that they particularly liked of the original table. I was able to create a table that was carved on both sides of the rails so that when one viewed the rails and legs through the glass top the whole piece looked finished. The table was then finished by Catherine Lottes using stains, glazes and gold leaf. Below are some images of the carved table base before and after the finish was applied.
The challenges I’ve found when working in a wide variety of styles are part of the reason I love this work so much. You may have noticed that the style of work I’ve shown in his post is not very close to a lot of my other work. Nevertheless I find it fascinating that in being a craftsperson and working in other styles in which you have to actually create a real object or set of objects in the real world you have an opportunity to unwrap layers of history and thought. You are uncovering the same practical and aesthetic problems others, sometimes long ago, have worked on. Through your hands you can touch the ideas of others.
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A friend of mine and his wife are having a baby! They asked if I had a rocking chair design. I hadn’t, but it was something I had been thinking of and working on, off and on, for a long time. I decided to finally complete a design with the hope that my friend would like it and want the chair. Above is a rendering I’ve just completed of my design. Below I’ll write a little about the process of designing the chair.
I knew that one of the biggest hurdles facing me in this project was Sam Maloof. Sam created the definitive craftsman designed and made rocker many years ago. Many, many woodworkers have copied, emulated and been inspired by the Maloof chair and it’s no wonder. Not only is the Maloof chair in many ways beautiful he also published how he made the chair along with drawings with dimensions. The earliest article I’ve found is his “How I Make a Rocker” in the September/October 1983 issue of Fine Woodworking magazine.
Actually I told my friend about the Maloof rocker and he indicated that he had seen versions of it already but he wanted me to re-interpret that rocker in my own way. There were elements of that rocker that didn’t really look right to my eye, that I thought may have been concessions to practicality, to designing a chair that could be sold at a given price point perhaps. This is part and parcel of the design process and I cannot criticize this aspect of the process at all. It is necessary if the design will ever be built. But this did give me an entry point to the design.
I was surprised though that with so many others making versions of this chair no one else had addressed the issues that I saw. So, I decided to use the Maloof chair as my starting point and try and work out those elements that just didn’t sit right with me. In doing that I hoped that I would come up with a design distinctive enough that I could put my name on it.
Kem Weber designed a chair he called the Airline Chair. My sketchbooks have many drawings of variations of this chair and in going back through them to review my past attempts at this summit I decided to pull some of this work out and stare at it for a good long time. You can see an example of Weber’s chair here. And here is one of my sketches that shows the influence of that chair:
After quite a bit of sketching with pencil on paper I moved to my CAD program, Rhinocerous and started “sketching” on the computer. I developed a profile that I found interesting.
The circle and arrow were part of my study of the center of gravity for a person on the rocker.
I also used my “ergo man” to study the profile.
I would return to my ergo man throughout the process to check dimensions and the location of the arms and back spindles. I continued to refine the profile.
I then used the profile drawings to guide me as I built the design up into 3 dimensions. I also used the Flamingo rendering program to apply wood grain and texture to the design. Here is an early rendering I created to see if I was headed in the right direction.
It became apparent to me that I was getting close but still had a lot of work to do. It was right around here that I realized that I did not like the crest rail, that rail at the top that the spindles ended into. It was not only derivative of the Maloof design but it was too heavy for my eye.
Once I changed that rail I was free to change the profile of the back legs as they rose up to meet the crest rail. I was able to then add a curve in a different plane, to bow them slightly. This was getting exciting now.
Here’s an image showing the bow I am talking about.
The above image also shows the changes I made in the front legs. I added material to them and shaped them to reflect the bow of the back legs in the same plane. With the curve of the crest rail I was expressing a cradling of the sitter. I emphasized this cradling by adding curved brackets at the joint of the back legs and the crest rail, up at the top.
I resolved a couple of other issues, particularly the joint of the back legs to the arcs that curve under and support the seat and really felt as if this chair was becoming complete. Here’s another view of the finished design.
Since my friend and I are both surfers, as is my friend’s wife for that matter and their new baby will likely surf as well I did a rendering of the chair in maple with walnut stringers in the seat. A reference to surfboard stringers.
I list the chair on my website here although this is the only place I show the surfer version (so far).
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It was the horizontal sleet in my face that was the hardest to take. It nearly blinded me.
Saturday we had gale force winds, sleet and snow. The winds kicked up some good size waves on the western shore of Lake Michigan. We had quite a bit of rain the days before and along with a ton of melted snow the sewage system here in Milwaukee was overwhelmed and the water works was dumping sewage into the rivers and lake. That shut down a couple of beautiful surf spots, leaving few choices if you wanted to paddle out.
One spot far enough away from the sewage release had a hellatious current. That left a spot just south of the ruins of a once well maintained beach resort. All that is left these days are three groins made of jumbled concrete that go from the beach directly out into Lake Michigan and the rotting slabs of concrete along the shore of what were once large structures, bath houses, concessions, and even a tramway. Now the slabs thrust rusting rebar up into the waves near shore making surfing there especially dangerous.
With north winds the groins create a point break of sorts, bending the waves around in clean arcs of peeling grace. Saturday was a different story. Saturday was just this side of manageable chaos, near washing machine conditions.
The wave period, the time between wave peaks was a mere 6 seconds. The waves were waist to chest high but were being blown in as chaotic peaks. The air was 38 degrees as was the water and the sleet came in horizontally. Looking out into the lake to watch for incoming waves hurt like hell.
I paddled out by myself around 3:30 Saturday afternoon, turning around just in time to catch a great wave. That is the sucker wave of course. Not because you’d paddle for it and miss it, but because that one great ride would entice you to stay out in the storm looking for another great ride. Tim G. joined me before I could catch another wave. There wasn’t much chance of talking. Occasionally we shouted a few words, but mostly we watched each other over the tops of the waves as we traded rides.
I was done in after an hour. My face felt sunburned from the pelting it took from the sleet and I headed back up the bluff. Here’s where civilization comes in.
From the time I paddle ashore to the time I was soaking in the most delicious hot bath was no more than 30 minutes. It was there, lying in that tub of hot water that I realized what has to be the best mark of a civilized society, the ability to heat water and to bathe, to luxuriate, to spend time thinking and philosophizing, letting your mind wander down lazy pathways, soaking in that wonderful warm, nay, hot liquid.
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Asian Vanity by Todd Fillingham.
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I have often been asked to design a piece of furniture in an antique Asian style. The image above is an example of a vanity I designed and made for a client’s Asian themed powder room. The project came to me as simply a need to have something that would work as a vanity and fit into the theme of the room. I worked with the interior designer who had done the original design of the room. She had already picked out the counter top material, bowl and plumbing fixtures.
It is not unusual for me to be asked to come up with an idea for something that does not already exist in some form. There isn’t much in the way of antique Asian vanities available. It was also necessary to have the vanity fit certain dimensions, it had to fit the copper bowl that was to be used, yet not be too large for the limited space of the vanity.
Here’s the piece with the top, bowl and plumbing fixture.
Asian Vanity by Todd Fillingham
To create a design I consulted a couple of my favorite reference books for Asian furniture design. This design was derived from an image of a Chinese ice box shown in “Chinese Household Furniture” by George N. Kates, copyrighted 1948. The other book I use frequently is “Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings” by Edward S. Moore, originally published in 1886. My copy is a Dover edition copyrighted 1961.
It is from these books that I have learned about various motifs that are common among much of antique Asian furniture as well as proportions and function.
Kates notes that filled with ice “very large, almost giant, models of this same type were also placed in the apartments of the Summer Palace, as late as the time of the last Empress Dowager, merely to freshen the air when she was in residence.”
A design motif that is characteristic Asian is the “horsehoof” legs of the stand. I would say that the brass bamboo trim also reads as Asian. I fabricated all of the brass work in this piece save the handle.
I designed another piece that used the horsehoof legs as well.
This is a rendering I created as part of the design process for this project, which was to be a table to hold a piece of carved jade. The line drawing may show the horsehoof elements a little better.
This project eventually took a turn to another style and here is a rendering of the piece I eventually made for the client.
One of earliest projects that was influenced by Asian styles was a room divider screen I designed for clients for whom my partner in Woodcrafter’s Remodeling at the time and I were remodeling a condo unit for. We had installed a pair of skylights and they wanted a screen to block the glare of the afternoon, summer sun. I dug up an old slide of it and used my new and improved slide scanner (more on that later) to digitize it.
This reminds me that I have also done several shoji style doors over the years. I’ll have to dig back into my archives to find some images of those for a later post.
This screen was an example of designing and making a piece that was to function as an original, antique piece may have. As I mentioned above, I am often asked to create a piece that will a decidedly more contemporary function. Another project along those lines was a set of bookcases I created. The client wanted antique Asian style bookcases, but there are really none available. She was an informed and avid collector of antique Asian furniture. I had repaired an antique table for her so I was asked to create the bookcases.
I chose to create the “antique Asian” style by using the cloud rise or what is sometimes called mist motif, rounded sections in the frame structure and a finish scheme similar to other, truly antique, pieces she had collected. I opted to create a pseudo red-lacquer however in order to keep the project within my clients’ budget. I used red tinted shellac. I also tinted the shellac for the brown interior elements and the shading used to age the piece.
You can see in this detail shot of one of the bookcases the polychrome elements as well as some of the rounded sections. By placing two rounded rail like sections together, in this case the top of one unit and the bottom of the other unit I created a look very similar to another Asian motif, the double rounded rail.
This image shows the trim at the top that uses the cloud rise motif.
Another project I recently designed was a desk and dresser set that was to have an Asian look.
The black color was to tie in with other elements of the room. Here you can see the use of another design element common in Asian style furniture, the round leg joined in a bird’s mouth miter with a round rail as well as reference to the cloud rise motif in the bracing rails.
There are many challenges in designing furniture to fit a particular style, especially if the function of the piece needs to be updated. Often traditional designs typical of old or even ancient cultures have elements that are very useful within the broad vernacular the work was being made in and used for. Techniques and tools were passed down for generations. It was made this way because it had always been made this way. Our culture is little different. Think of the common 2 x 4 used in carpentry. My challenge includes using early 21rst century materials and tools as well as the skill set I have acquired in the late 20th century to design and create work that reflects the work of a wide variety of designers and builders from very distinct and different cultures.
I will post shortly about working in the Biedermeier style, a style and method of construction very different from antique Asian furniture.
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Fillingham Art Furniture Design 
