Furniture Design Ideas

Y ou can buy the lumber for your woodworking project from several sources, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. The local lumberyard is often the most convenient supplier, but the selection may be limited to con­struction woods such as pine, spruce, and other softwoods. Though you may find the occasional cache of hard­wood at […]

Wood is a hygroscopic material, absorbing and releasing moisture as the relative humidity of the surround­ing air rises and falls. And as the mois­ture content of a piece of wood changes, so do its dimensions and weight. When wood is assembled into a piece of furni­ture, the changes can produce prob­lems—some great, some small. A […]

There are two kinds of skill involved in constructing a fine cabinet or bookcase: putting together the basic skeleton of the piece and then embellishing it. The finials and rosettes of the Queen Anne highboy featured on page 106 must be turned with care on a lathe and then artfully carved; the distinctive pilasters of […]

W hen my wife and I started house-hunting in the country we looked at new con­temporary homes, new houses built in traditional styles, and old houses. Naturally, we considered things like layout, heating systems, and dependable plumbing. But we were still drawn to old houses. For me, there was the knowledge that an old house […]

T he library unit shown here, made out of Honduras mahogany, was one of my first big commissions. It was built in the shop I co-own with Frederic Loeven, a fine cabinetmaker. We had built a lot of single pieces in the past, but this was our first opportunity to experiment with the planning and […]