A Strategy for Furniture Design

with Gary Rogowski
Wed. February 29th, 5pm-8pm

Level: All Levels Welcome
Cost $50

Design is a skill like any other in the woodshop. Learn how to think about design in a way that gives you results. Woodworkers may know how to set up a table saw, but do you design a table with a drawer that looks good and works right? Design is a vocabulary that you can learn like any language. Learn how to build your knowledge of design as we walk through simple steps that all designers use in some form.

Design rests on an understanding of need, engineering, and beauty. Commodity, firmness, and delight in other noted words.  Learn in this class how to generate ideas, build on sketches, transform your scribbles into models and then finally how to generate your cut list so you can get building.

Design is a right brain activity, involved with non-linear thought while so much of furniture making is left brained and logical. How do you meld the two to create beautiful, sturdy and functional work? Learn an approach for designing work in this lecture that is based on following simple principles and answering basic questions. You can learn how to design. Put down that magazine with shop drawings and take up your pencil. It’s good fun and very rewarding to design and build your own work.

Mastery Field Trips

Last week our second year Distance group and our first year Local Mastery students combined for a field trip. We had the opportunity to visit the amazing Mark Azevedo down on the Kenagy Farm in Albany. This is such a treat for everyone and has been for years ever [...] Continue Reading…

The Design Dance

The Design Dance is one that always begins simply. You sit down with yourself and start. You politely inquire if your Right Brain is available to go out and play. It is of course sitting there like a Chocolate Lab with a ball in its mouth and very little [...] Continue Reading…

Cobblers

This letter was sent to me by an old friend.

Hi, Gary!

May I give you a story, as promised?

The story is told that if you were a young person in medieval France embarking on a spiritual quest, if you were fortunate you might meet up with someone older, perhaps a [...] Continue Reading…

Borrowing My Chisel

This question comes from a former student.

If a someone asks to borrow a prized chisel how would you politely decline the request? Paul F

My reply: There are several options.

Go Shakespearean:
What, you egg! Shag haired villain of treachery! [and then with a smile] Begone or I shall have to smite [...] Continue Reading…

The Work Bench

Stick with this fact: your bench is the center of the universe. When a client calls and asks, why won’t the door shut after we moved the piece? Or why do we need the shim under that cabinet leg? Or how come the drawer sticks? Your reply is always [...] Continue Reading…

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