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2 months ago | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen |Kaitlyn Hayes
-From Fine Woodworking #276Growing up, Ben Strear was enthralled by a book on the artist M.C. Escher and his interlocking, seemingly infinite patterns. Intricate patterns remain an obsession with Strear, and his carved and painted basswood pieces strive to fuse pattern with form.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen |Ben Strano
At the end of September, when Hurricane Helene charged up from the Gulf of Mexico and dropped 14 to 30 in. of rain on Asheville and environs, engorging the French Broad River and generating floodwaters that ripped through western North Carolina, many of those in the way were woodworkers. One of them was Mike Warnock, a longtime maker who had quit his job a month before to go full-time as a solo builder of custom kitchens.
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Nov 20, 2024 | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen |Erika Ericson
From boyhood Marc Ricourt was fascinated by both woodwork and art. But after training and working as a carpenter for some years and then attending art school, he found himself unsurevwhat he would do. A book byRichard Raffan taught him how to turn, and gradually his passions for art and handwork began to merge. Ricourt harvests beech and oak trees for his vessels from the hilly, forested land around the village where he lives in Burgundy, France.
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Aug 16, 2024 | 
finewoodworking.com | Brian Reid |Jonathan Binzen |Ben Strano
After studying woodworking in the mid-1990s at Parnham College, in Dorset, England, Brian Reid returned home to Seattle with a gift from his teacher, Robert Ingham: a stack of planks from a flitch-cut yew tree. In the ensuing years Reid built furniture in Washington, then Colorado, and now in Maine, yet never touched the yew. “I carried that log through 10 moves,” Reid says.
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Feb 26, 2024 | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen |Ben Strano
When Kieran Kinsella chainsaws a 2-ft. length off a log, rolls it into his shop, and hoists it with a gantry crane up onto his lathe, he’s thinking, “What can I get out of you? Let’s see what’s hiding in here.” Soon enough, he gets an answer in one of his curved or faceted stump pieces, stools and tables made with green wood harvested within a few miles of his home in New York’s Hudson River Valley.
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Jan 8, 2024 | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen |Kaitlyn Hayes
When Silas Kopf graduated from Princeton in 1972, he received an undergraduate degree in architecture. But the prospect of working in that field at a time of bland corporate design seemed suffocating. Almost by chance, Kopf discovered furniture making of a particularly expressive kind: He met Wendell Castle, who was then building flamboyant sculptural stack-laminated pieces, and after some pestering, he got a job with Castle and stayed two years.
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Dec 6, 2023 | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen |Kaitlyn Hayes
Synopsis: Looking back at the furniture and philosophy of Jere Osgood, who died Oct. 10, 2023. His chairs, chests, and desks pushed well past the boundaries of traditional forms and building methods, while remaining firmly rooted in function, ergonomics, and sound structure. When Jere Osgood died October 10, we lost one of the great furniture makers of the past half century.
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Aug 29, 2023 | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen |Kaitlyn Hayes
It might have been partway through furnishing an entire castle in Scotland—a job that included crafting circular built-ins for the rooms in the turrets— that Englishman Richard Williams began to dream about doing some smaller-scale work. Throughout his 35 years in the craft, Williams has always loved designing individual pieces, but for the last two decades he and his team of craftsmen—as many as 12 at some points—had been tackling increasingly large and challenging commissions all across Europe.
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Aug 10, 2023 | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen
George Nakashima Woodworkers recently released a video of insightful interviews with their team, featuring excellent footage of the grounds, buildings, furniture, and workshops. Nakashima’s woodworking philosophy and dedication to traditional Japanese building principles is present throughout, not only in the peaceful beauty of the buildings, but also in the harmony between the furniture pieces within them. It’s beautifully done, capturing the spirit of the place in a way I haven’t seen before.
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Jun 13, 2023 | 
finewoodworking.com | Jonathan Binzen
Synopsis: Hank Gilpin’s stepped cabinet is a blend of impeccable joinery, humble woods, hand shaping, and classical proportions. At approximately 20 years old, it recently returned to Hank’s shop for a facelift. Built to stand against a staircase in a mudroom in Massachusetts and hold boots and gloves and scarves, Hank Gilpin’s red oak stepped cabinet bears his unmistakable imprint: a blend of practicality and playfulness, impeccable joinery, humble woods, hand shaping, and classical proportions.
