There is something so soothing about precisely cut wood; it possesses the best of natural and manmade endeavors. The warp of the grain coordinating with straight lines is a graph mapping out humanity’s intimate relationship with the world. When I stumbled for the right word to express this, master woodworker Ford Thomas offered up “articulation.”
“I have a very mechanical brain for thinking things out; I’m mechanically inclined,” explained Thomas as another carpenter tended to the whine of a table saw, articulating some very exact mortise and tenons. Thomas broke away to check things with some digital calipers. “Three one-thousandths of an inch,” he read. “I’d rather it be tight than loose.” He ran the wood through the saw a second time and re-checked it. “See? That’s perfect.”
Despite this precise attention and the cavernous warehouse full of equipment, Thomas returns to the basic notion of creation. “This is a very low-tech way of making something. I can imagine it, using my creative side. Woodworking is a way to bring the two together. I’d probably have been an architect if I’d had anyone mentoring me—I have a degree in horticulture.”
Thomas credits necessity and his father as the two influences that got him where he is now. “I was in college and had my own apartment and needed some furniture that was particular to my style and my interests, and would work in that very limited space. My father happened to have a very nice hobby-type workshop. He was a chemist but he helped me with doing my projects. I really liked doing woodwork, but I never thought of it as a profession.” That experience in his dad’s workshop turned out to be the catalyst that changed that.
“Being creative and doing something unusual sounds like fun to me. I like to design and build something that’s never been done before. That style is contemporary American woodworking. There are just not a lot of guys like me down here. There are a lot more like me in Chicago, the Northwest, the Midwest and larger cities on the (East) coast.”
Thomas returned his attention momentarily to the project going on, allowing me to take in the massive brick warehouse. The scene is practically Wagnerian with two men huddled under a work lamp, at a table saw surrounded by wood, piles of uncut planks competing for space with projects in varying states of completion. A train thundered by with a mournful whistle when Thomas returned. “I’ve been in this space since 2002. I was downtown in a much smaller studio for fourteen years.” I started to comment that it reminded me of a wizard’s cave but between the saw and the train, my inadequate assessment would get lost. Instead he described the table he made that readers can see in our tableau.
“It’s a dining room table made of maple with a set of eight chairs. This is what I like to do. I’m a very good chair-maker. Not many woodworkers aspire to be a chair-maker. It’s not easy. Making a chair is probably one of the more difficult woodworking projects. I recommend you sit in one and see. They are very correct, made to fit the body.”
He wasn’t kidding, and I’m not kidding when I say this relatively simple chair articulated out of curly maple was one of the most comfortable chairs I’ve ever sat in. Every part of my body felt supported; it was almost like floating. He explained the braces and how this chair will last past both our lifetimes, but all I could think is that I never want to get up. But I did when he brought me to his showroom.
There one can find the greatest reflections of his articulation. A triangle-shaped table that features a small sand Zen garden in a cutaway. A dramatic cabinet shaped like an elongated U. A lamp constructed from rich marbled maple leftovers from another project. It’s the kind of stuff that will make anyone look with a bit of disdain at the level of craftsmanship they live with on a daily basis. Thomas’ pieces are not Rococo monstrosities filigreed to the hilt, nor are they minimalist gestures attempting to deconstruct chairs and tables and cabinets. They are instead unique, familiar products of the world painstakingly articulated for our living with them.
Details. Details. Details.
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