winter woods

This box is part of a collection that celebrates the tactile and visual experience of a walk in the woods, as the hands reach out to touch the supple, slender twigs of winter. The woods are white oak and walnut. The reeds bound in walnut and brass represent those twigs.

The value of the student's work

This afternoon I have a zoom call with fellows from the Teaching with Small Wooden Boats Alliance. It will be a question and reflection concerning who is to teach and to whom. I hope it is a useful discussion, driven in large part by the questions fellows have.

In the meantime I have a second coat of finish to apply to boxes and an additional ten made that require inlaid lids. Years ago I visualized my last years being spent in making small wooden boxes. Here I am.

Leave a legacy if you can. Remember what Otto Salomon had suggested. The value of the carpenters' work is present in the things they've crafted. The value of the student's work is in the student. I'll try for both.

Make, fix and create...

having fun

I've been having so much fun with a newly designed box that I've made more of them in a larger size. A couple days in the shop, you can make beautiful things that can last more than a lifetime.

Is it not time that we begin thinking of each other and less about ourselves. Do you see the sunrise? Do you see the thunderbird taking flight.

Tomorrow I have a practice zoom with Joe Youcha of the Teaching with Small Wooden Boats Alliance to prepare for a conversation zoom with their fellows on Friday.

While at work, I visualize a kinder, more gentile nation that's truly focused on the needs of each other.

Make, fix and create.

Hygge or Hózhó?

I woke up in the night with a feeling of warmth and contentment thinking about the Norwegian word hygge for a situation of noticeable harmony, and the similar word hózhó which means approximately the same thing in Navajo.

Perhaps the feeling was inspired by reading Tony Hillerman's books about the Navajo, and noticing a similarity between native American design and that created by Norwegian craftsmen in creating Vikingsholm in Lake Tahoe. These boxes have a native American feel that could be right at home in Norwegian design.

So rather than appropriating native American design motifs I am exercising (as a half Norwegian) my own as the patterns are universal.

The patterns are created from strips of wood offset to each other and fitted into routed grooves.

May we seek harmony in all we do. Even the worst of us can serve someone as a bad example. Like it or not, we are all in this together. So get used to it and feel blessed.

The photo below shows beams at Vikingsholm decorated with patterns that are similar to my fabrication of inlay strips.

Make, fix and create.

New design boxes.

These are made of white oak and inlaid with various hardwoods. Corners are finger jointed and they incorporate various design techniques from earlier boxes.

Colors will be enriched and enhanced by a clear Danish oil.

Make, fix and create.

Empathy

"Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings, perspectives, and experiences of another person, often described as "walking in someone else’s shoes". It is a critical, teachable skill comprising cognitive (perspective-taking), emotional (feeling with), and compassionate components that foster relationships, reduce prejudice, and improve emotional regulation."

It is what Froebel perhaps had in mind as he was inventing Kindergarten. How do you share those feelings, perspectives and experiences of another person unless you have been introduced to them. The illustration of Froebel's song about the charcoal maker comes to mind. Its is from his book Mutter - und Kose-Lieder translated in English as "Mother Play," which is directed toward German mothers to help them become their child's first teacher. 

At the top left is a drawing of a hand gesture with the child's hands forming the shape of the Charcoal maker's hut. The charcoal maker when he came to town would have been a stranger to most children and frightening to some degree, being covered with soot as he sold his filthy wares. The song and illustration showed the mother and child that the charcoal maker, strange as he might be, was an important member of community life. The blacksmith working at his forge and the mother feeding her child, warmed by the fire were evidence that the child might understand and take to heart.

So, here we are at war, when we might have chosen our leaders to have empathy instead and built bridges of understanding. It's what we should have learned in Kindergarten. 

To arise unchanged?

 Norwegian author Jan Kjærstad wrote about the fearful power of fiction:

”We know hardly anything about our strength and possibilities. Sometimes I see man as a creature all folded up. We walk upright, but we have not managed to raise thought. Mentally speaking we are cripples …. I further imagine that books, fiction is just about the best tool for making us unfold …. And that is precisely why I am worried; why am I not hunting in a more determined way those books which will make me rise, which will make me grow a few centimeters? Because I no longer wish to be changed? I admit it: because I am afraid”.

How many books can you read that leave you essentially unchanged? There is a danger, in that if you do nothing from what is offered in what you've read, you may feel in some ways impotent and diminished. If Mr. Kjærstad or others think that reading may lead to a fearful transformation, they might try making things for awhile instead.

The change will offer less and even more to be afraid of. One might worry, "Am I to become a tradesman because of this?" Don't despair. Or be afraid. Your first efforts will not bring your whole life to such a point of risk. And even tradesmen have a value in the vast scheme.You would have to actually get good at something first, and by that time you will have discovered that what you've done is something noble that makes you of greater real value to others, easing your transition into a more meaningful life.

Today I'll cut box lids to size and fit the motion sensor light on the edge of the garage that broke off and was hanging loose. I could have called a tradesman to fix things and deprived myself of the satisfaction of having fixed it myself.

Make, fix and create...