A Slide Show

Glass base

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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The Design Process: A Table, part 2

The dialog with my clients generated an interest in two of the sketched designs I had created, sketch #3 and sketch #4.

Sketch #4 was derived from an earlier table I had made and shown in my portfolio. Jackie had wanted to be sure and have the table legs as far out towards the edge of the table top as possible to maximize leg room under the table. Both of these designs accomplish that as part of the design motif.

Since these designs were quick ideas drawn to look for a direction to move in to accomplish a final design I felt that they needed some refining. I discussed this with Jackie and Peter and got their impressions. From those discussions I created two designs, one of each table.

At this point I’ve started looking at the joinery as well as other technical considerations so that I don’t present a design that would be too expensive to accomplish. Here is design #3.

I had also modeled the site, the clients kitchen, in my 3D cad program and was able to place the table within that model to give my clients an idea of the scale of the table and how it would look in their space.

 

I did the same process for design #4.

 

I’ll show another view of the rendered model here. I provided Jackie and Peter with several views of each.

 

 

 

For both designs I also created line drawings with dimensions. Here is the line drawing for table #4. Click to get a larger view.

 

Now it was up to Peter and Jackie to decide which of the two they liked the best or whether they would like to think about another approach. Their house had several elements that were of the Prairie/ Arts and Crafts genre. One of the elements of Arts and Crafts style is the use of exposed joinery and table #4 has more explicit exposed joinery. They eventually decided on #4.

After they made their decision I worked out a bid price for them and we signed a Commission Agreement detailing the design, materials, price, completion date and delivery details. I then created shop drawings, selected the lumber and built the table.

Here is a detail of the completed table showing the exposed joinery.

The cherry will darken with age and exposure to light. The kitchen it went into had plenty of light exposure and that is why I rendered the models in dark cherry as the finished table would soon darken.

Jackie and Peter were quite happy with the table. As a matter of fact they wrote this testimonial for me:

Todd Fillingham is the best kept secret of a craftsperson in Milwaukee. He has a beautiful portfolio of lovely, creative and usable furniture. I have known Todd for 25 years but it was only when I heard his name sponsoring an NPR show did I think- “he is the one to design a perfect table for our newly remodeled kitchen.” And I was right. He looked at the site, he listened to my ideas, he did an array of drawings, he made a few alterations after discussions and he used both his sense of design and what I wanted with his skill and computer savvy to do a picture of a table that is exactly what he then produced in beautiful cherry wood. We thought the price was reasonable for this utilitarian piece of art.

Jackie Boynton

 

 

The Design Process: A Table, part 1

I’ve been meaning put up a post that describes the process I go through in designing a simple project such as dining table. This project was completed this fall.

The client contacted me about a dining table for a new kitchen they had recently added. The client, Jackie Boynton, and I discussed the general requirements and set an appointment or me to visit her house so that I could get a sense of the space and other furniture they had.

The table would need to regularly seat 3 and occasionally seat 4. Once I got to the site it appeared that an oval shape top would be appropriate. The new kitchen was contemporary enough, with large windows and clean woodwork for an oval to work, the space was somewhat small for a rectangle and we did not want to constrict the traffic flow of a busy kitchen, used for cooking, homework, family gathering and many other activities.

I eventually established a comfortable table size by taking measurements of the site, modeling the site in my 3D cad program and by using my “ergo man” model. This is a model I’ve created to allow me to assure enough room for table settings as well as many other ergonomic design concerns in many projects. Here’s a screen shot of this model:

Here’s an image I took while on site of the area the table would eventually occupy.

You can see the old table, obviously too small.

I manipulated this image in my photo editing application and added a rendering of an early sketch idea for a table to get a sense of the style direction I should be going towards.

This process of manipulating the image in a photo editing program is awkward and doesn’t allow me to measure the clearance around the table and to get a good idea of how the table will look so I modeled the space in the 3D cad program and was able to drop in various rough ideas for table designs.

To get a dialog going betwenn Jackie and myself about the table design I created a series of 3D sketches and quickly rendered them and was able to email them to her and her husband, Peter. They were able to discuss them and get back to me. Here’s a link to my Flickr set showing several of these sketches:

I think that these designs have a lot of potential and look forward to interesting another client into having me finish one or more of them.

In part 2 I’ll show the two finalists that Jackie and Peter chose, the eventual final choice and the completed table.