Child’s Rocking Chair

Child’s Rocking Chair, Christmastime 2000, cherry seat and back with padauk inlay, birch and padauk laminated runners, amphormosa frame, shellac and wax finish. I built and finished this rocker in about eight hours from scraps I had on hand. There was no preliminary design, I just built it to fit my eight month old friend, Lily [...]

Max’s Stool

My son, Max, and I made this stool with it’s large turned seat. It belongs to Max and sits in his room. He and I turned the seat and legs as we learned how to use my new lathe. It was very fun. Max did most of the finishing, and we both think it’s kinda cool. Stool 20 inches [...]

UMB Zen Garden Meeting Room design and construction

I was commissioned to design a meeting room at UMB Technology Center (UMB is a major regional bank). UMB named the room ‘Zen Garden’, and I’m told it’s the most popular place in the building. I made (with my own hands) everything in them room, including a table with six chairs, two large benches, two ceiling elements, [...]

Hand Print Stool

This stool has cherry legs and a birch wood seats. I was tired of sanding, had made some ugly stretchers, and didn’t like the leg orientation, so I tried to pull this piece through with paint. I painted the legs and braces black, and then covered my hands with blue paint and picked up the stool. It turned [...]

Torii Stool

OK, this has to be my best stool. I can’t keep my eyes off it. Proportions are just right, the seat so organically curved, the joints well formed and tight. It’s pretty perfect. And one leg (must be the back one in this photo) has the most beautiful open knot just above the knee. I was looking for the feel [...]

Checker Stools

I spent three weeks in the fall of 1998 at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado adding to my traditional moku-hanga and other water based print making skills with Hiroki Morinoue and Allen Smith. An artist in residence there, Ulrika Scriba from Gengenbach, Germany, was especially interested in the several booklets I had authored [...]

Flat Top Stools

These two stools both incorporate half-inch thick cherry wood seats. In order to feel secure when sitting down, I re-inforced the seats with a pair of strips underneath running across the grain and glue joints. The stools use wedged through tenon construction throughout, and the legs are pinned to the seats with purple heart dowel (after I [...]

First Stools

My first stool is all cherry wood, with a deeply sculpted seat. Looks like it would be dangerous, but it’s really quite comfortable. The top is painted a beautiful, deep, ultramarine, and the legs have been lightly stained red. Not bad for a first attempt, but not nearly as nice as the second. The  second stool has a [...]

Tea Room Table and Chairs

These are my first furniture designs. Built from old fir high-school bleachers I salvaged plus some used fir 2x4s from concrete forms, these went into the tea room of the Kansas City Shotokan Karate dojo. Padauk wood inlay was used in the five chairs and table top to fill the many holes and defects in the old [...]

Tiled Floor of vertical grain oak and padauk

While building the dojo floor for the KC Shotokan Karate Club, we decided to leave an area for visitors and observers. We built benches along the windows, and I designed, built and laid this beautiful wood tile floor. First I measured the area, then designed the tile size (tiles had to be less than 4.5″ square so [...]

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