STYLES & INFLUENCES
Meeting my customer's needs and preferences is foremost. Thus, the style is dictated by the specific job. When asked to work in styles unfamiliar to me, I research all I can.
For instance, to do a cabinet job with a Japanese feel to it, before beginning work on design, I pored through volumes of books on the subject, visited Asian Art Museums, and contacted people who were knowledgeable on the subject.
When asked to adapt Greene & Greene's style to a house near Portland, I immersed myself in all I could find on their work, then I went to California and toured one of their houses. After assimilating the general feel and the specific detailing, I was able to design pieces which incorporated some of their trademark forms and details, yet were unique to my client's setting and function.
Left to my own preferences, I tend to work in the Arts & Crafts tradition, keeping simple, clean lines without a lot of clutter. I occasionally indulge in my favorite style, which is to use natural shapes and forms—branches, and slabs with their 'live' edges—in conjunction with milled lumber, to create organic looking pieces which one customer refers to as my 'hobbit-hole' furniture.
For instance, to do a cabinet job with a Japanese feel to it, before beginning work on design, I pored through volumes of books on the subject, visited Asian Art Museums, and contacted people who were knowledgeable on the subject.
When asked to adapt Greene & Greene's style to a house near Portland, I immersed myself in all I could find on their work, then I went to California and toured one of their houses. After assimilating the general feel and the specific detailing, I was able to design pieces which incorporated some of their trademark forms and details, yet were unique to my client's setting and function.
Left to my own preferences, I tend to work in the Arts & Crafts tradition, keeping simple, clean lines without a lot of clutter. I occasionally indulge in my favorite style, which is to use natural shapes and forms—branches, and slabs with their 'live' edges—in conjunction with milled lumber, to create organic looking pieces which one customer refers to as my 'hobbit-hole' furniture.