We look forward to seeing you there! Meet many of the members, working to support sustainable local designer-makers in Los Angeles.

Join us at CAFAM for the opening reception for “Social Fabric and Scratching the Surface: Contemporary Wood Sculpture” and also check out the debut of the desk. The opening goes from 6-9pm and admission is $12 (or free if you are a museum member.) If you’d like to see the desk any other time for free just pay a visit to the CAFAM Museum Shop which also happens to be selling some smaller BoxCo pieces.

Drawer side and box joint jig.

See, if I was a good businessman, I’d be ruthlessly about my bottom line, and all else would fall into place from there.  That’s not so hard to do when you’re going through your accounts, making your estimates, sourcing your materials, competing against a lousy economy for a job.  But when you get in the damn shop, and you know you have to make the right choice to do better than break even, it’s not so simple.  It’s hard to automate instead of express.  Inevitably (and I should really know myself by now) I choose to do what I see as the right thing artistically at the expense of the bottom line.
Witness, the chest of drawers I’m currently building.

I love making these box jointed drawers.  But I can never pay for them.  They’re solid wood everywhere, including in the bottom, where you could so easily hide plywood.  They’re so much harder to install, because you can’t use an applied face to cover your mistakes.  The face of the drawer is the front of the box.  Period.  But I also can’t help but believe that they are nicer for it.  I feel better making them.  I just can’t take you out to dinner with the proceeds.  Thanks for understanding.

Cradle type base for the chest of drawers I’m making.  In ze glue up phase.  I got that massive clamp at the San Bernardino flea market for a dollar.  I love that thing.

my main assistant, and primary counselor, hard at work on her chew toy.

It has been a busy summer for all of the BoxCo members but  some time has been made for progress on the new CAFAM front desk. Here’s a quick sneak peek as it sits in Cliff Spencer Furniture’s shop awaiting its top!

Craft and Folk Art Museum

It’s quite rare indeed that the L.A. BoxCo gets to pool their talents and resources to produce a singular piece, together as a group. We’ve fortunately come across that opportunity with a new design for the entry desk of the Craft and Folk Art Museum across from LACMA on Wilshire. This tiny gem on Museum Row shows some really delightful exhibitions and is definitely worth a visit, especially if you’ve never been there.

Andrew Riiska taking some measurements.

The old desk is currently being demolished with all of its hardware to be repurposed for the future project. The new desk will be a perfect fit for the museum which promotes excellent design and craft, not to mention it will be made locally with sustainable methods.

So check back here to see the desk progress!

Also featuring wall art from local photographer,

Martin Rusch + artist, Laura Ricci.

Everything is for sale, including the house!

Please join us next Thursday for a wine-and-cheese

See you there!

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Dunnage Furniture at Inheritance, 8055 Beverly Blvd.

show went swimmingly. To clarify, “dunnage” refers to material used to pad, prop up, balance, shim, and otherwise support massive interstate and international shipping. It’s basically building blocks for moving huge stuff. I think these days dunnage is mostly composed of some kind of plastic. but at some point in the past, dunnage was wooden. The wood came from super lowgrade wood that was maybe a step or two above firewood – at a point when grading had everything to do with wacky grain, checks, knots, and other “imperfections.” This system of grading still applies, I guess, in an aesthetic world where wood is most prized for not looking like wood. That is, consumers and makers are always looking for perfect, flat, knot-free material that won’t move or in some other way be rambunctious. I like to think that BoxCo type people, while appreciating “high grade” lumber, has as much or more appreciation for “low grade,” “useless,” “trashy,” cast off undesirable type wood as well.

Who we are

OK, speaking just for me, in that case, I find something intensely interesting in using these materials that stubbornly remain what they are – living things. Wood, after all, is an organic material that continues to act that way: it absorbs and gives off moisture – breathes, in effect – and when it does that, depending on the make up the wood, it moves, cracks, bends, warps, and may do so differently at different places based on its grain. It’s a real pain in the ass. But actually, that’s part of what

Fix me

makes what we do remarkable. We are not masters of wood, we are collaborators. We do our best to shape and bend the material to our design, our idea, and then hope for the best. We do what we can to anticipate where this material will go, how it will try to spring its joinery, and then give it room to do its thing, while hopefully helping it to continue to do our thing. On our best days, we’re collaborating with nature. On our worst, we’re fibbing our way into temporary dominance, only to be reminded by time, humidity, and sun that our days are numbered, and what we make, if it stands up, won’t stand up for long.

Dunnage in a Riiska-Moyer Collaboration

Wow, OK, slight digression there. Thanks for humoring me. That’s all to say why we appreciated our dunnage so much, and what’s special enough about it to have a show. Dunnage represents the best of the worst, the most perfectly imperfect of

Wood and Food! Thanks Paul!

materials, in which we recognize ourselves, our own stubborn imperfections our own stubborn imperfections which make us exactly and precisely unique, perfect, children of God. A tall order, no doubt, high flown prose, definitely, but not entirely overstated.
I found this stack of dunnage shopping for old tools on Craigslist. In addition to being a furniture maker, I’ve got a romantic and practical appreciation for old machinery, of the type that gets obsessed over at vintagemachiney.org. It’s aesthetic, but also functional. At least in this realm, there’s real truth to the statement, “they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.” I found an ad from Bud on Craigslist, and went to check it out.  When we first met Bud, who’s since moved to Florida, Andy and I were checking out his amazing Oliver jointer (which I eventually bought), his huge planer (I already had one of those), his Tannewitz bandsaw (I couldn’t justify that one), his crazy drill press (I bought this even though I already had a great old one) his enormous collection of R&B and other records (I couldn’t afford them), his very completely and partially restored collection of vintage bicycles (likewise, I didn’t get any of these – a man can have only so many collections, after all!).  Anyway, in the process of checking all that out, we stumbled on the dunnage, and had to have it.
The culmination of all this was our show last weekend at Inheritance.  I’m so proud of the BoxCo.  Inheritance looked amazing.  So did the work.  Only downside is that Bud couldn’t be there.  Florida is a little far to commute.

Dunnage stored at Bud's. Note vintage bikes and planer

The Dunnage Desk Organizer

Our dunnage score contained a mix of red and white oak. The horizontal part of the organizer is white oak while the feet and upright are red oak.

The shallow bowl is first carved with a CNC router. It is then hand sanded to a smooth finish.

The Solid Side Table

The completed Solid Side Table. These tables can be designed in various sizes with different leg placements.

The Dunnage Pile

Part of the dunnage pile that sits outside of Cliff Spencer’s shop.

Before and after milling

It’s beautiful on the inside!

Blocks

Glue up

The blocks are cut to exact dimensions and then carefully glued together.

Be sure to stop by Inheritance to see all of the work!