I went to a gallery opening last night for a friend who was having a show of his wonderful photography (here's a link to his website: www.kenhochfeld.com). It was fun seeing his work again up on the wall, we shared many years and many ideas as young artists in San Francisco - we also together began our exploration in furnituremaking in those days as a sideline passion which obviously grew into careers for both of us (here's a link to his cabinet shop website: www.rosemontdesigngroup.com). My main interest in those days was in painting, drawing and conceptual art, but more on that in another posting in the future.

I've digressed from what I started to tell you about. At the opening I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in many years who proceeded to tell me how much he's enjoyed checking out my work on my website (and the blog) from time to time but that he was bored with reading the same postings that remained from more than a year ago without change. HMMM. So here I sit today trying to get myself back to what I thought was a good idea at the time, blogging about my work, but my distractions sort of took over my best interests. But I'm back now, let's try this again.

Another thing I realized was that Blogspot isn't always consistent in letting me know if someone has tried to comment on the blog - I am supposed to get a message at my email that there is a request for a new comment, I found that some never came thru to me. So if you try to send one my way and I don't respond it is because I didn't get the notice and I haven't gone through the rigamarole of checking back after signing in to see if anyone has commented. Bear with me, I'm not one who spends his life blogging.

So today I'm posting two new posts (this is the second) on a little of the process of what I do. It's not meant as a tutorial as such rather it's a quick look at some of the steps it takes to design a new chair or how veneering is done.

Chairs have been a wonderful exploration for me, it wasn't enough to design and build the typical custom furniture, I found I had a need for the challenge of not only learning how to build a very fine chair but a serious exploration of ergonomics, and of course pursuing my need for new designs and ideas. Along the way I think I've probably designed and built 30-40 new chair designs - many of which were for the express purpose of matching a table design commission. It's no small effort, it's actually very involved developing a new chair but has really been a wonderful part of my life as a furniture designer/maker. The chair pic shown for this posting is a variation using some of my graphic work (see the SLAB section of the website for more of this graphic work).

The veneer slideshow is for the Pacific Heights Dining Table on my website for your reference.