Section of an old apple tree. Photographed by by step-daughter Lisa Ohlweiler on a 4"x5" camera. The apple tree was planted over 100 years ago to feed horses that were pulling out timbered hemlocks in the NY valley where I have a home. The bluestone in the porch comes from the hills behind the home. The wood comes from the forest. The shoe comes from Israel.

Click on the picture for incredible detail.

I have seen bears eating the apples from this tree. I have walked in these woods and have seen some of the huge, solitary, ancient hemlocks that once covered these mountains. It is an act of imagination to think about what these woods in the Catskills once looked, smelled and felt like.

On my last walk up into the mountain, I found a wild bees' nest high up in the crotch of a hemlock tree. There was a cloud of bees high above my head going about their business. There is always something to discover in the woods. One evening my wife and I sat quietly as dusk approached and witnessed the deer coming out of the woods. They sounded trumpet like snorts to each other when they were surprised to happen upon us.

The region timbered hemlocks for one reason: to strip the bark of the tree and use it in the tanning process. There was a tannery in our town, the Phoenix. Horsed pulled wagons of logs out of the valley and over mountains to the Delaware river and to the railroad. Today there are old apple trees, mostly abandoned scattered throughout the valley. You are likely to find deer there in the late summer munching on the drops. And as I discovered one day when I walked underneath a tree, occasionally a bear over your head.

The House of Tomorrow

I recently attended the NeoCon World's Furniture Market in Chicago, and on the way back to Ohio my wife Dominica and I stopped at the Dunes along the East side of Lake Michigan. I was reminded of a mystery I had started to investigate a few years back in an attempt to find out more about "The House of Tomorrow", created for the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago as one of several concept homes. The architect for the "The House of Tomorrow" was George Fred Keck. My personal connection to the home is that the interior designer of the home was my Great Aunt Mabel Schamberg. She was the inspiration for the "Mabel" collection in my design line (www.straussfurniture.com)

below: The House of Tomorrow at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair.
Entrance to the airplane hangar is at the bottom right.



I had wondered if there were any pictures of Mabel's interior design work and what had happened to the home after the Fair.

below: How the home looks today. It was moved following the World's Fair to the other side of Lake Michigan in an attempt to develop a luxury retreat area for the residents of Chicago near Michigan City, Indiana.(For an excellent summary of the homes from the Fair and their move to Indiana see the website link within
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3QGB_Chicago_Worlds_Fair_Houses_Beverly_Shores_IN
that will bring you to a PDF file:)

Judith Collins and Al Nash; Preserving Yesterday’s View of Tomorrow
- The Chicago World’s Fair Houses
and from their article:

"After the close of the Fair in the fall of 1934, five of the houses were sold to Chicago real estate developer Robert Bartlett. He brought them by barge and truck to the Indiana dunes, hoping that these and 10 other structures relocated from the World’s Fair would entice buyers to his resort community of Beverly Shores, IN. ... In the ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, he promoted
the resort with its theater, restaurant, and golf course as part of the American dream. Chauffeur-driven Packards picked up dream seekers at the Beverly Shores railroad station.
Bartlett intended to furnish the five World’s Fair houses, open them to the public, and sell them starting in October 1935. However, his dreams were never fulfilled. By 1938, only one house —the House of Tomorrow — had been sold. Seasonal renters occupied two houses, and two were vacant. Prospects for the houses and for the development became even bleaker with the approach and outbreak of World War II. By 1946, Bartlett had sold off his interests in the resort; and in1947 the community incorporated as a municipality . . .

The steel and concrete structural system of the house was originally assembled at the Fair site in only 48 hours. Its most prominent feature is the floor to ceiling “curtain wall” of glass used to enclose the second and third floors. Chicago architect George Fred Keck defied mechanical engineers who said that due to the expansive use of glass the house couldn’t be heated. Just the opposite occurred. The predicted amount of winter heat loss was far surpassed by the actual solar heat gain, resulting in the failure of the home’s revolutionary air-conditioning system in the summer. When Bartlett moved the house to Beverly Shores, he replaced the glass walls with operable windows to allow for proper air circulation. Keck later became a leader in developing passive solar heating through research and residential design. . .

The house offered a kitchen with state-of the- art gas appliances 'calculated to bring joy and satisfaction to the housewife' . . . In addition to a garage, it boasted an airplane hanger since futurists in 1933 assumed that every family would have both an automobile and an airplane."

We investigated this area a bit on foot- beautiful beaches and the dunes are eerily quiet and inviting and by car which led us up to nearby Michigan City. I remember as a child taking a boat ride over to Michigan City and spending the night on board in the harbor. The area has many ingredients that could have made it a wonderful tourist destination, being so close to Chicago and yet feeling worlds away. However, planners have permanently (it would seem) sealed Michigan City's fate for the worst.

The downtown is virtually abandoned and rundown despite many cool looking older buildings. There is a strip mall to the East that has all of the typical stores and restaurants. But there are two larger strikes against M.C. that I don't see in every otherwise potentially great tourist destination. 1) There is a prison right in the middle of the town.

and 2) There is this lovely attraction hovering over the town:

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!

HighPoint Furniture Market

I just returned from Highpoint, N.C. after spending two days visiting the furniture market held semi-annually there. I went there for the first time to check out the market and see if it is right for our Company to show there in the Fall- October market. Unlike Las Vegas, one of the chief benefits of the Highpoint market is there isn't anything else to do there other than attend the market. No gambling and shows. So the buyers who attend are serious about checking out the possibilities. This was a significant lesson in why Highpoint should be a good fit for us. As this was my first market, I had nothing to compare it to but all of the veterans said "it is nothing like it used to be". That may be, but I found the traffic in the "Interhall" area to be significant and interviewed several of the companies that exhibited there. All were reporting solid sales and leads. They were universally encouraging. My interest was piqued. There is a strong possibility that I will be exhibiting there in the Fall and was invited to the Interhall area. There was a nice sense of camaraderie.

The other factor that was hard to miss was the surge of popularity for Sustainable and "Green" products. The Sustainable Furniture Council, which we are members of, planned several cool events and many vendors are now members and are using their logo. (See our environmental policy on our website for more info:http://straussfurniture.com/?page=environment



There was a "green drinks" social networking evening held at Cisco brothers showroom in a renovated mill building and which is a very cool space.see http://www.millvillagehp.com/ Cisco renovated a 100 year old mill into a series of showrooms. Their furniture is all sustainable and has been very successful. I met financial planners with environmentally friendly investment strategies, a major lumber company executive who is encouraging sustainable forestry within their company, a contract furniture company president who talked to me about potential for working towards sustainable projects, and a free spirited veteran of the industry who has been constructing scenarios for the Sustainable Furniture Council to vault into the next level of popular consciousness. And the hors d'oeuvres and drinks were fantastic too.

I also listened to a panel on social networking and sustainability. All the electronic forms are inherently sustainable as they don't necessitate the cutting of trees. I learned from their anecdotes how Twitter especially (which I can attest to as well) can network you with like minded companies and people in your industry. All Twitter is is a conversation, just like you might have at a cocktail party with others, except that it is taking part on the web. Because it is digital and available on the net, messages can spread at a geometric rate. That can be both positive and negative, but it is incumbent on a company to monitor and participate so that they can have some control over their company's reputation. All messages on Twitter are stored and searchable through Google, so they have a life beyond the moment of the "Twit". Companies need to be in control of who is putting out their message and never "trust" it to someone who has no investment (spiritually) in the Company.

Lastly, as a Northerner, it is a lot of fun to travel through the South and listen to accents from Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama. These are sounds I don't normally get to hear and they remind me that our country really still has regional cultural differences despite the national penetration of Target, Wendy's, Pier 1 and ToysRUs among others. On my way back I stopped in a little diner near the Blue RIdge Parkway in Virginia and had a biscuit and great tasting grits. I could barely understand the fishing talk overheard between the chef and the patrons, but the food and atmosphere couldn't be beat.

Sustainability and Survivability

We are members of the Sustainable Furniture Council. We believe in using resources wisely. We recycle our wood waste and our water bottles. We are always looking for materials that are less harmful for the environment (and for us). Tomorrrow, for example, a salesman I know is coming by to talk about water borne finishes with me. We haven't converted to them yet because the industry has not been able to produce a finish with the same aesthetic and durability qualities as lacquer. Water borne finishes also have solvents in their formula. I will be interested to see what they say and what the product looks like and what it is made of. We will not compromise our quality. And the lacquer that we use meets the rigorous European standards for HAPS and is considered a low VOC product. Acetone is not considered a VOC, by the way, which doesn't mean you can freely breath it. When a lady is getting her nails done and the nail lady is not wearing a respirator, you do wonder what is happening to her lungs. But perhaps you understand why acetone was excluded from the VOC list.

I have contended for the longest time that the most environmentally friendly thing you can do in purchasing furniture is to find a local or US maker (assuming that you are the consumer and are also in the US) and buy a product that is built to last generations. In the same logic that recycling is good, but it still uses lots of energy - while re-using is better as it doesn't have to convert matter to another form and therefore uses minimal energy, buying furniture built locally to last generations is much better than buying "Green" furniture shipped across the ocean and built to last ten years. The latter will then have to take up landfill space or be burned. The former has a small carbon footprint.

We try to build things that last. That means basically doing two things: Firstly, choosing materials of a high quality, such as solid wood, kiln dried to the proper level of moisture. Secondly, it means paying close attention to joinery. A good joint should not need a great deal of glue to successfully bond. Staples and screws will always fail before a good glue joint will. I have looked at a great deal of antique furniture that needs to be repaired. You learn a lot by examining these joints. Chairs built from turned parts with dowel joints almost always fail because the maker didn't understand wood shrinkage and the joint had to rely on the glue. Nakashima (http://www.nakashimawoodworker.com/) was one woodworker who knew how to fit the joint and then shrink the wood before joinery so that the wood would expand to lock the joint together. A good dovetail joint almost needs no glue to be solid. Same with a mortise and tenon. But I have seen countless joints come to me after desperate repairs with screws, dowels, etc. in a last ditch attempt to save a chair or some such thing. Crafted quality will last and takes up no landfill space.

We just had a potential customer switch to a product made in Asia, rather than buy custom made from us. The reason was money. The imported product is of vague provenance and of non described materials. In a photograph, the import looks great. In reality, when it arrives, how will it look? When will the day come that quality and the environment play equally weighted roles?

tuning your scraper

I wrote recently about a cabinet scraper. Its a tool that is so useful on a daily basis and yet many a contemporary cabinet maker doesn't know how to use one, let along how to sharpen one. I hope that the following is not too much information for those who are never going to make furniture. It is my hope to give you a sense of what you must do to keep your tools "tuned" in the shop. Sharpening tools is a necessary part of the making of cabinets and furniture. It is also of course a viable metaphor for what we all have to do in our lives. It takes "away" from the making of the "thing" but without keeping our tools sharp and ourselves, we would struggle and fail to accomplish our goals. So here is a basic primer on sharpening a cabinet scraper.

The sharpening is accomplished on a maintenance basis using a hardened piece of steel attached to a handle. Think of a screwdriver without the "business end" still intact and that's the idea. They make burnishing tools that are for this purpose too, but the French craftsman I trained with had just a modified screw driver handle and shank. You have to be able to hold the tool while exerting some force on the edge of the scraper and also the steel has to be at least as hard as the steel in the scraper. There are two essential motions that one performs. This is assuming by the way, that the scraper has already received an initial dressing with a file followed by a sharpening stone. The first movement is to go across the scraper like one would do with a barbers blade on a stropping strap. Back and forth across the flat scraper in the same plane as the flat orientation. It helps to be doing this on the surface table of a machine. The goal is to create a little burr that "grows" outward ever so slightly but in line with the scraper. This motion can be repeated many times, as the more the metal is moved here the better the final result will be (within reason). The second motion is a one shot deal that occurs for all four edges that will cut. Two per long edge, one on each side. The burnisher is held at almost a right 90 degree angle to the scraper , but tilted ever so slightly toward the flat, at about a 80-85 degree angle. The scraper has to be held flat on a preferably metal bench part of a machine such as a jointer, with about 1/4" of the tool protruding away from the edge of the machine. You must have a very firm grip on the scraper pressing down and on the burnishing tool pressing against the scraper. You get one shot at this and there is no going back unless you want to start over. Hold the burnisher low so that you don't cut your hand against the edge of the tool! Start as close to the far corner as possible and pull towards yourself while pressing against the edge at a constant 83 degree angle (approx!) and that is it. Repeat 3 more times on each other edge. You will get a burr now pointing up that you can feel with your finger. When you slightly bend the scraper with your thumbs in the center while holding the outside edges and press along a piece of wood you should get very thin shavings of wood. If you are producing dust, it is not sharpened properly or you are not holding the scraper properly. If you are trying to follow along and do an actual sharpening, good luck and I hope I gave you enough information! I'll be happy to answer questions and welcome your feedback.

phantom pain

In response to a friend's question about a note that I had lost a part of my finger in an accident, I wrote: I lost the tip 8 years ago in a wood machinery accident. It was a jointer and I lost the finger down to the first knuckle but luckily in this case (luck is relative), not so far that I couldn't still fully bend the finger. I experienced excruciating electric shocking like pain that occurred at random moments and a persistent throbbing pain that was made better by elevating my finger so that (because this was the middle finger) everyone thought who didn't know me that I was "giving them the finger" (I wish I had the finger fully to give). The pain lasted for months and months until I realized one day about five or six months after the accident that the pain was no longer from the "source" but imprinted in my brain. Then with the help of a friend who is a doctor interested in alternative medicine, he guided me while I hypnotized myself and accessed that part of my brain circuitry that was causing the pain. I visualized that area of my brain like it was an architectural plan, and I was fixed in finding the "control room" and found it with massive amounts of electrical gear and "breaker" switches inside.  I felt myself entering that room and I walked up to the correct breaker and threw the switch into the "off" position. The pain disappeared and has never come back.