Here is a picture of the fossil stone top going on the dining table. It measures 88" x 44"

Working on a 50 million year old table

After our collaboration on the first two tables of Strauss wood bases and Green River Stone tops was successfully shown in High Point Market this past October, Doug Miller the co-owner of GRS approached me about designing a table base for a large stone top dining table that we could show in New York City at the Architectural Digest Show.

So I do what I always do when thinking about a new design. I try to let my mind wander and also to listen to dreams, whether they be in the daytime or night. I have been fascinated in the last year or so by the ring motif and have found a really cool source for rings in the metalworking company that hosts the blacksmith I work with. They have a lot of scrap steel tube that goes into the recycling bin and we have been salvaging pieces of it and using cut off sections to create forms.

The circle motif was probably introduced most forcibly into my head by studying the designs of Jacques Emile Ruhlmann. So much of the furniture design I have learned has been through admiring the talents and ideas of this French man of the Art Deco period. He inlaid amboyna burl with ivory as in this example pictured below. The craftmanship is outstanding, and the effect is mind-blowing. But the power is from the interlocking and random seeming arrangement, and this is the feeling I wanted to capture.

This cabinet is not my favorite Ruhlmann piece, however the inlay is a style that he used in/on several different configurations. In my mind, he is capturing some of the naturalistic flavor of the Art Nouveau and injecting it subtly into his more modern conception of furniture.

What I hoped to accomplish in bringing some of my dream to bear with the circle motif, is the idea of this very heavy stone top somehow levitating over the floor. I wanted to create some life and a sense of lightness. This design for a dining table is a first in another sense too. I am creating the base in my shop in Ohio, and Doug's Company is shipping the stone top to New York directly. I will ship the base there and the two parts will be joined for the first time at the show. There is no chance for correction at that point. We have tested the stability of our base with mocked up tops in the shop. The stone is going to weigh over 300 lbs. We had better got it right.

All of the wood structure on the top of the two pedestals is designed to interlock with the stone top and connect the two pedestals together. There are four bolts on each pedestal welded to the inside of the iron rings and protruding down through the bases to nuts and washers on the underside. The top of the ring assembly has brackets which are drilled for bolts to attach into the inside of the wood columns with t-nuts installed in hidden plywood inserts that fill the column inside. The base is 20" square and all the wood has been mitered to meet seamlessly.

A single pedestal side table with a round top is coming.

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.

Shop snap shots Sepetember, 2009

Well here is the virtual shop tour. If you were to come into the shop front door, you would be greeted first by Gus. He loves everyone who comes into the building. It doesn't matter whether you deliver the mail, are a salesman or are a designer. He will jump up on you and I will be telling him not to. He is completely unaware that he was acquired from the "Pound" to add a sense of security to the front office manager's life.
He did have to exhibit an extraordinary level of patience to be photographed and after what must have been at least a hundred photos, this is the one that the photographer apologetically offered as the best of the bunch. Every time she snapped the lens, he would look at me or away. Everytime she was not ready to shoot he would look at her. It was too consistant a pattern to be mere coincidence. He is toying with us - as usual. I am sitting on a first generation Katharine chair.

The vide poche legs are carved at the top and the bottom as they are not a straight cylinder but taper out. The middle section is done on a lathe. But the top has to be carved with a chisel and rasps and finally with sandpaper.


A spoke shave is also useful for roughing out the shape. It is one tricky tool that really depends on your feel. Its kind of like a peeler for cucumbers in the kitchen. You don't want to be pressing into the flesh, just setting the knife at the correct angle and pressure to shave off a skin's worth. The spoke shave works that way but also has to be in accordance "with" the grain.
It might be more dangerous to use a chisel or other hand tools than power tools. You have to be mindful of where your pressure is directed and where you fingers are located. But a good sharp chisel is less dangerous than a dull blade because you don't have to press as hard and therefore are more likely to cut the wood efficiently.
The vide poche bodies are constructed as "shells" and then veneered. The drawer fronts are glued up out of solid poplar that has been resawed and glued into a curve and dovetailed to the sides which also serve as runners. In the foreground are the zebrawood and striped mahogany bodies awaiting the drawer fronts to be veneered. The legs are made separately and attached with fasteners after being finished.
Below you can see a completed custom Mabel ottoman, ready to be shipped and more vide poche bodies. In the back by the chop saw is part of the dust collection system. Every machine has a pipe running to it to collect the dust.

The spray booth has fresh air intakes and an exhaust fan. Even though it "moves" a large volume of air, the flow has to be softened by filters so there is not hard draft against the work which would cause the finish to harden over a skin before the underneath area has dried. We currently use a very low VOC lacquer based product that meets strict European standards for fumes, but are also exploring the new generation of water based lacquers. Above, I am using a gravity fed touch up gun to create a "tone" on the Mabel bench base. The base is finished separately from the metal leaf trim.
Examining and rubbing a Katharine chair ready to be shipped to the Chicago showroom for a floor sample. The chair was designed on paper and then in plywood and underwent several generations of technical changes to the upholstery system to get it just right.
These are "blanks" of walnut ready to be shaped into Mabel legs. They are glued up into 4" thick and square sizes as most lumber is impractical to obtain in that size to start with.

Taking the mystery out of a custom sofa's cost

I know that costs are extremely opaque to most people when it comes to buying furniture and understanding what they are getting. Recently I had a customer approach me about a custom made sofa. Then, this morning I read a blog that I follow, expressing outrage about seeing a $7000 sofa in a store and being "lectured" about why the cheaper ones were not worth it. Obviously it is not a great sales technique to hector your potential clients. I'm not sure if the cheaper ones were "worth it" or not - maybe they were. But if you want a custom made sofa, and you want it to be sustainable and well made, a $7000 retail number is not a scam and not far off where it will cost. (of course deals can be made and are always done off of that number) Here is my response to the blogger:


"I always enjoy your blog posts. However, your latest post got the blood flowing this morning. Here's the deal: If you want a couch made in Vietnam, China or wherever Ikea makes sofas there are lots of options between $500 - $2500. Some of these are more or less well made and some are not. Some use solid wood and some use particle board for the frames. Some use screws and some use traditional jointery and glue. There is such a variety of quality out there that unless you have hard information it is difficult to know how well the sofa is made. I don't believe an Ikea couch will last 30 years. A good sofa - meaning constructed the correct way with solid wood and a high quality suspension will last that long or longer. Its a personal choice about your budget of course and everyone has to make that call. But in regard to your outrageous $7000 sofa, here is why, in very nuts and bolts terms: If I make a sofa custom made and in the USA, it is also going to be a green or sustainable product as well as lasting a life time. There is no way I can produce a sofa for under about $1500 including frame, suspension and upholstery labor. Add materials - about 20 yards for a good size sofa - and at a modest $40 a yard you have another $800. Now the cost of the unit is $2300. That is my manufacturing cost. Add 25- 30% for mark up and you have a wholesale number of at least $2875. You figure retail doubles at least the wholesale cost and has to add in shipping and now you have a retail cost of about $6000. Not too far off your number that you thought was outrageous. I understand that not everyone can afford a $6000 sofa, but if you want one made of the highest quality, you want it made in the US and you want it to be sustainable, that is what it costs. This is not a rip off or a scam. This is what US manufacturers have to charge in order to survive. Otherwise all of our manufacturing will be gone. You will not have a choice of anything to buy that is made in this country. This is the challenge I face every day in educating my clients. This is the challenge I face in trying to sell next to cheap imports. I pay my workers a decent wage and they get health insurance. As a consumer you have all the choices in the world."

John Strauss

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.