My good friend Stephanie Cheng is quite an amazing designer/artist so i asked her to design a logo for me that i can use for promotional stuff. As you can see it`s awesome. i may have to make a wooden shield to carve it on now….
Thank you Stephanie.
Earlier this year myself and my friend Steve did this TV show called Deck Wars
that just aired on HGTV (you can watch the episode on line, its the Kids deck).
It was really a fun experience. Two days to build a deck seemed insane to me when we signed on, i`ve never built a deck so what the hell, be over the top. The guys that helped us build it, Dave and Pat were awesome and i learned a ton about carpentry from them.
The show turned out pretty well. Go check it out.
Tosho knife arts got a nice write up and some photos in Toronto life. Here`s the link.
So i`m not a designer. Don`t claim to be one, i can`t . i have no formal training in it, i don’t understand the language of design or really any of the rules. When i think of designers i think of BCA and Ben and Nick and Tom there or of Stephanie Cheng (yes i`m aware i could have referenced more famous designers, but these are my talented friends). The rules of design for furniture are varied and of course are broken all the time. Some people will always take simple over extravagant and vice versa. There are rules for pleasing looking bends, overly ornate and simple turned legs, designing everything for the golden number,or how thick all the material you use should be. There some people who just create crazy designs and roll with it and there are others who keep pieces of wood in the shop for years until it tells them what it wants to become, like James Krenov or George Nakasihma (just Google them, it`s worth it). But neither of those guys would i call “designers” in the traditional sense, they did design what they built they were more interested in the craft and pushing what was possible or available and that’s the path i would like to be able follow. Design beyond your ability and learn as you go.
Yet with this new path of woodworking i find myself “designing” more often than not. Sometimes it works because the client wants something specific and we talk about the direction and needs it has to fill and its a matter of making something that looks cool and works to fill all the perimeters of the job. And something were all happy with. The hardest part is making it pleasing to the eye, the size and fit is a matter of the constraints of the space, which is similar to process of making it, the constraints of the materials and the techniques available.
Sometimes it just kind of comes. I had the slab that i bought intending to hang it like a headboard, but then i decided to make a table with the same joinery as the chair i made and that would also draw from Nakashimas designs. I sketched the basic design and had sizes and measurements done while i ate lunch. it was simple because the table is simple.
But with this piece of oak i`m having trouble. I bought the piece because of the crack and its shape and knew it would be a table. But now i`m stuck on what kind. i had a design drawn, and even bought the material to make it. And then i got a different idea for it. And then another. And now i have 6 sketches for tables that this one piece of wood could become. It could be a low coffee table, a hall table, a sofa table, or even a shallow but wide dresser of sorts. Each of which has different joinery and aesthetics.All i really knew buying it was that i would put keys in it and figure out the design later. So that’s where i am on it. The walnut keys are cut and placed. Its planed and smoothed and has a coat of oil on it to protect it until i decide its fate. For now it will just hang out at the house and be a piece of oak with a crack and some butterfly keys. I`m hoping having it here where i do most of my sketching will help. If i can have it accessible to measure, or draw leg placement on the bottom (it has some of that now) or so i can make cardboard prototypes the design will come easier. Or maybe it`ll just get hung on the wall.
I made another one of the cherry shelves at the same time i made the other one, but finished this one awhile later as jobs took up most of my time.
This one is for my parents (no, it isn’t a surprise, i`m not doing a “hey guess whaaaattttttt!!!!!) who i`ve never made anything for, since they live far away and all the things they want are huge. So they get something smallish. That i can take on a plane.
Because this is going to live far away and because i like, love them and junk, i saved the nicer wood for my parents shelf.
The cherry board i had for the top has really nice wavy figure and the color is much stronger, more toward red than light pink, so with a nice finish on it the grain pops right out.
For the drawer fronts i used spalted myrtle (that same damn tree….). The spalting is a fungus that infects the tree causing those black lines to run through it. the drawer fronts were all cut from one board in order to really highlight the flow of the spalting.
This one is my favorite of the two. The grain is much more dramatic, which works in a small piece like this and i love that board for the drawer fronts. Dovetailing the drawers was a bit fussier on this one. That spalted myrtle changes density a lot so i was constantly sharpening my chisels to make sure they’d slice the grain cleanly, and just had to cut slow….patience is a virtue right? yeah. right.
After finishing the installation of the Tosho store Olivia presented me with an amazing gift of some new water stones and a flattening plate to keep the stones running for a long time. This is one of the best gifts Ive ever gotten. Japanese water stones are amazing, they can sharpen a chisel in no time and tend to wear less over time than artificial western stones. Until now i haven’t been able to get any good stones. Mostly dude to expense, but really they are hard to find. I’m gonna use these til they aren’t there anymore. Thank you Tosho!!!
So this is the job ive been working on for the last little while. Tosho knife arts is a new store run by Olivia Go and Ivan Fonseca.
Both Olivia and Ivan are accomplished chefs and saw the need and desire for access to exceptional quality chefs knives (though really anyone and everyone should buy them). They started selling to local chefs, branched out into a website and now this storefront on Markham street in Toronto.
Not only are they selling these works of art (because really only artisans of the highest caliber can make japanese steel into something worth using. i have a couple of Japanese chisels and can attest to the durability and quality of the steel) but they provide sharpening services, sharpening lessons (you didn’t know, but your doing it wrong) and soon in-store lessons on sharpening and proper knife technique in food preparation.
Breadwinner creative agency was hired to design and build for the Tosho space. I worked closely with Nick at Breadwinner on this job and got a chance to have insight into the design and feel of the whole job.
My favorite part is the slab of walnut desk top. I love working with walnut and getting the chance to turn this slab of wood into something beautiful and useful is a great way to spend a couple of days.
the store opens on Monday July 25th, and its done for now but we’ve already got a few ideas for some nice additions to the space.
