What I learned by showing my work in an "Art Show"

(above image by Katie Balas)

I have done a number of trade shows in the furniture industry, and even the Architectural Digest Home Show in New York City, where the public was invited in for three days, but I just completed my first all to the public "Art Show" in my home town of Canton, Ohio. The Canton National Art Show was just completed.

So what did I learn from two and a half days of direct to the public interaction? First of all that you never can tell who is going to show up in your booth. Secondly, that you should never overestimate the educational level of the visitors but that doesn't mean that they don't have something valuable to say and learn. Lastly, that being in front of a public which expects in general to be buying "a little something" at least is a great market test experience.

1) At the end of the first full day, a young woman came into the booth and was looking quietly at my items and asked if she could take several cards for her husband who is an architect. In my little city of Canton, one doesn't have high expectations for visitors, but there are pleasant surprises. I once had a conversation in the airport here with Macy Gray's mother who was picking up her children. Ms. Gray is from this town originally. Well, the visitor I encountered, told me after chatting for a little while that she is from New York City and is a classical singer. I looked her up on Google later and learned that she seems to be quite well established with several recordings and her architect husband is successful enough to be recognized by Forbes for his business on several continents. She was visiting family here apparently.

2) At the other end of the experience spectrum I talked with a young couple who were admiring one of my nightstands and asked if I could open the drawers for them to see the inside. They were so impressed with the quality of the work. The male partner blurted out to his companion's embarrassment that he now understood the difference in quality between well made domestic things and what you get from Value City Furniture. But I was not offended and I did not want her to be embarrassed, because that is an important lesson, and how else can you appreciate the distinction without seeing the two versions with your own eyes. I think they both learned that there is a range of quality and craftsmanship and that there aren't just subtle variations in that spectrum.

3) I needed to bring some additional items to the Museum in order to "beef up" my display and to have some options in price for people who were browsing. One piece that I was reluctant to bring because I was not sure about its design success and color was my "Quarter Round" table.
http://straussfurniture.com/?page=deco . It is also called the Circular Modular Coffee Table on my website. I sold the piece during the show to a visiting couple and had another customer who wanted to have me put it on hold. It looked much better in the Museum than it did in my shop and people responded to its playfulness and its versatility. I have a new found respect for learning from the public.

On speaking at the #140 conference

I recently had the opportunity, at the invitation of Shira Abel (Twitter ID: @shiraabel), a high tech marketing maven with an interior design blog named "tchochkes", to speak on a panel at the #140 Conference on Twitter and Interior Design. [ The archived video is available at: http://www.ippio.com/view_video.php?viewkey=0d6c07f73b7557e3d960]

During our whirlwind 15 minutes, which the Twitter conference had provided us with, for a moderator and three panelists (myself (@johnstrauss), Grace Bonney (@designsponge) of Design*Sponge, and Angela Gruszka (@ABC_Carpet) - Public Relations Director at ABC Carpet and Home ) we had limited opportunities to articulate our thoughts on the world of Social Media. So I thought I would follow up here with a few additional ideas.

First of all, as I said on the panel: I began as a huge skeptic. But one year later and I have over 1200 "followers" , many of whom are in the design trade as Interior Designers, Architects, affiliated manufacturers, woodworkers, furniture designers, media folk, etc. I generally don't follow back people outside this orbit so it is not the number of followers I am after (as many on Twitter are) but the quality of the ones I relate to. I think I could count on one hand the ones I knew before starting off on Twitter so that means about 1200 people in my field are to a greater or lesser degree aware of what I do that I wouldn't have been in touch with otherwise.

Of these followers, some have contacted me for quotes and one of those requests will no doubt soon become my first "Twitter job". Others may contact me in the near future. Several of the people/companies I follow have already worked with me in one capacity or another to produce work. (Examples are below) And it was a Twitter connection that led to me being invited to be on the #140 conference panel. (and many opportunities may follow from that). Through Twitter I have friends that I talk to about our chickens, a friend whom I exchange Hebrew words with to further my slow learning of the language, and new friends in Israel that I could visit when I go there next. Through Twitter I now have a community of friends who get together for "Tweetups" at the different furniture markets and who are now friends "in real life". The hugs we give each other when we meet are genuine and heartfelt.

So some examples of the networking results: @copperhandman, otherwise known as Rich Hawk and I tweeted first and then spoke by email and phone about a collaboration. I invited Rich to show some work in my High Point showroom last October and to collaborate on a three-panel screen that I designed. The result was shown in Interior Design magazine in their Market review issue that came out about a few months ago. From that picture, I have one custom job that I am currently completing for a pop-up television cabinet, with copper doors. (photo will be coming soon) Through Twitter, I met Alexandra Gibson (@gibsondm) who with Gibson Design Group helped me with a rendering of a project I designed for a new building of a local non-profit. The rendering was displayed at the building dedication so that they could identify a funder for the project. Through Twitter I have met many people involved in marketing furniture companies such as @tkpleslie, @prosperbydesign and @leslienewby who have along with many others been extremely supportive of my ventures and designs. (I have not paid them for their kind words - yet!) Through Twitter I have received coverage of my work from Home Accents Today (@WesAtHome and @tracybulla) and HER Nashville (@designvine). On Twitter I have exchanged communications with Kathy Ireland (@kathyireland) and Mariel Hemingway (@marielhemingway). I could continue in this vein, but the overarching concept is that any of this would have been unlikely without engaging on Twitter.

In the next post, some further musings on the philosophical and social underpinnings of Twitter as it relates to our understanding of the "Public Sphere". Stay tuned.

Making it into the Times Home section

We were featured in today's New York Times Home section for our collaborative work with Green River Stone to create tables with fossil stone tops. Please see the full article here.

Some background:

The Times contacted us to do the story last week. We were so pleased and realize there is some luck in getting selected. After interviewing me over the phone from my shop for quite a long time, they sent a photographer to do a "portrait". I brought my Labrador retriever Gus to the shop with me last Sunday and met the Times photograper David Maxwell. David did a nice job and took countless photographs. Most of them involved trying to get Gus to pose with me or walk alongside me as we strolled through the shop to I guess look "natural". If you have ever photographed animals or children you know how difficult it is to get cooperation when you want it! I guess the Times photo editor nixed the Gus shots because they didn't make it into the paper. But I will be in touch with Mr. Maxwell and hopefully we can post some of them here soon. In the meantime, it has been cool to get contacted by many people across the country who know me who happened to open up the paper today and see someone that they know.


Doug Miller of Green River Stone and I met at the first anniversary party of the Filsinger Chicago Showroom where we both show about a year or so ago. We immediately started to talk about the idea of collaborating on some tables that would involve my designed wood bases and his stone tops. At the High Point Market this past October, Doug joined me in my Interhall showroom. We debuted the first two side table collaborations there and some of Green River's wall panels were installed as decorative accessories. Through asking questions of Doug about the process of quarrying the stone and preparing the fossils and viewing a video that documents the work, I developed a feel for their amazing product's fabrication.

The fossils are authenticated and certified by geologists and come with a certificate. These are the fossilized remains of animals and plants that existed in or near a lake 50 million years ago. (In the Times article the author caught me by surprise by asking about human fossils! There were no humans or hominids in North America until about 20,000 years ago.) Over time the lake dried up and was covered with many layers and layers of sediment and earth and compressed by the huge weight into limestone. Green River owns about 11 acres of this prehistoric lake. They quarry the stone during the warm weather months and transport the slabs back to their workshop in Utah. There the fossils are carefully excavated using surface evidence that has "telegraphed" through to the top layer in order to know where to cut in. The fossil is actually harder than the surrounding stone. The workers clean the fossil, but leave it in its identical state and color.

The stones themselves can be honed smooth or left naturally rough. The stone can be treated like any non-sealed granite counter top.

Strauss Furniture is building a dining table base for one of the large fossil stone pieces that Green River has quarried and will show in the Architectural Digest show this March 18-21, 2010 at Pier 94 in New York City. http://www.archdigesthomeshow.com/

We can build a custom buffet or console with a fossil stone top for you and would be happy to discuss any idea that you may have to utilize this historic, natural and conversation starting product. Please contact us at: john@straussfurniture.com or by calling (330) 456-0300

carving a videpoche leg

Making a "vide poche" table takes some hand work. That is part of the reason I like to do them. My work is about having my hand be involved in the process and distinguishing what I do form factory made items.

Here is the process for carving a leg for the vide poche table. Above is the nearly finished leg sanded to 150 grit. It will get a final sanding to 220 and then the "finishing" process starts. I hope to show my finish and metal leaf process next. These photos are in reverse order, because I am not technically proficient enough to figure out how to change them. The whole process takes about 10 - 15 minutes per leg.


These are the tools of the "trade" for my carving the legs. Straight chisels, rasps, riffler rasps, sculpting rasps and sandpaper 80-220 grits.
This stage is after the finish rasping and the shape is almost there.
The legs has been rasped with the sculptural rasps to a very close approxiamtion of final shape. It is important to not take off too much to allow for finish rasping and sanding.
This is what the leg looks like after the chisel work. It still needs alot of refining but the basics are there.
This is as far as a machine can take it. At this stage, it has been turned, band-sawed excess and a bit of machine sanding to get the blank to a stage where it can be worked on by hand.

furniture, chickens, architecture and sustainability

What do chickens, architecture, organic gardening and sustainable furniture have in common? We are committed to green or sustainable furniture at work, but we also take those principals home with us. Our ideals are not an 8-hour a day job. This is a little story about what happens after hours at home.

Building furniture takes a certain kind of mental planning and rigor. For one thing, plans have to be made and each cut on the saw or pass on the shaper must be set up to get the precise result. I was trained as a sculptor, and so I occasionally look for the informal process of building with a goal in mind, but in a manner that allows for improvisation along the way. Backyard architecture is one of the activities that I enjoy for this reason. I would not plan a house this way (at least I don't think so) but a chicken coop seemed like a perfect project to tap into that energy. After clearing the legal isssues on keeping chickens in a city, the only hurdle was how to satisfy the requirements of these birds that I had never before kept.


I wanted to create a triangular structure and also be able to reuse playhouse components that were no longer needed when my kids had outgrown their little "house" that I had previously built. The mental plan included a sloped triangle and a post-modern feel. But it also had to be useful. One of the features I thought to build in was that the front wall where the chicken entry door was located would swing open entirely so that my daughter could get access to the interior for cleaning. The free range chickens bed down on wood shavings that come from my shop. We don't have to dump the wood waste in our trash which is an important component to our sustainable pledge. If we were a much larger operation we could sell our wood waste, but we don't create that much.
The coop has an interior room that contains the roosting bar and a nesting box with a lower level where the droppings drop for easy cleaning. My wife "plastered" the interior with a mud plaster over an insulation board so the chickens are safe inside over the Ohio Winters with only a light bulb as a heat source. The floor is raised off the ground to be resistant to rodents and easy to insulate. I wanted to reuse as much material on hand as possible so I utilyzed scraps of wood from a demolished deck, corrugated roofing leftovers from a storage shed project and the before mentioned playhouse parts like a window and siding. It also had to look "decent" and "neat" to fit into our suburban property as much as possible, and cause minimal distraction to the neighbors (not sure if we have achieved this).
(Egg access door is small but visible just under the roof above) The exterior room contains the feeder and waterer with room for the girls to walk around if we want to secure them behind the chicken wire fencing. But there is no grass or plant matter growing "inside"the pen and they love to roam outside in the garden and on the lawn looking for seeds and bugs. They provide fertilzer to our organic garden as well. The eggs are a deep shade of yellow-orange. I understand that the dietarily important omega-3's are naturally high in eggs from chickens who are allowed to range over green plant matter like grass. Not all free range eggs are created equal!



Perhaps the greatest benefit to raising chickens, designing a coop, recycling wood waste and obtaining organic free range eggs rich in Omega-3's is not any of those issues but the fact that my daughters take care of these chickens as pets. They have learned where (some of) their food comes from and have taken a role in contributing to the house hold. Having the "job"of taking care of "livestock" gives them a sense of responsibility beyond the care of a dog or gerbil. They have a pet who performs a useful role in their lives, which they especially appreciate when I serve them Challah French Toast on Saturday mornings.
We started out with three hens; a Rhode Island Red, a Barred Rock (pictured with my daughter) and an Americauna. The Red died over this last winter from some sort of infection at the age of two but the other two have just been joined by four peeps who are still living inside under a heat lamp as they are only about a week old. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by some time for some eggs!

Las Vegas Day two

In the Las Vegas Trade show booth again today, I have been faced with the reality of the global economy. We produce everything by hand in Ohio, the United States and do it at the highest standards of quality and material integrity. This is an expensive way to produce furniture. It makes our pricing "high end", but not necessarily our profit. At the trade show there seem to be as many people who want to sell you things as there are people who are potential customers of yours. Several of the first category have approached me and propositioned me on the potential of having our product made in Vietnam or Indonesia or India. I know that we live in a global economy and that most of the production for furniture today is being made elsewhere than in the US. One of the US based production companies here - they have a factory in California - put together an ad for the World Market Directory and listed the companies that make their product in the US. It is a small list that is here. We are on it with 29 other companies. I cannot count how many companies are exhibiting here. These salesmen are offering to make a product that costs me about $1200 to make in Ohio for $75 in Indonesia or Vietnam! How do we say no to these temptations and talk people into the importance of buying from domestic producers? I am searching for options to make things in our geographic area with a larger production to bring the cost down. Our company is located near the largest Amish furniture making section of the country so that may be where we head for solutions.....