CFDA Newsletter

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The Joint Show between the IDSA and the CFDA is on!
The Chicago Cultural Center accepted our proposal and we will be having the
Deceptive Furniture there in the Fall of 08'
Please let us know how you can help with the show.

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Program Schedules:

October 9 Small Tables - Lloyd Natof, Bill First, Rob Frazier and John Kriegshauser will show examples of small tables they have made and pieces they admire, and they will talk about those pieces and general considerations that pertain to the design of small tables. Other members are welcome to join in. We will have both a digital projector and a conventional slide projector available. If people will send me their digital images by e-mail I can prepare a CD in advance of the meeting. Kriegshauser@iit.edu.

November 13 Glass Studio - Jamie Stevens has been affiliated with Chicago Hot Glass since its founding in 2001. Tonight she will be taking us on a tour of their shop. The craft of working in glass tends to be more decorative than functional, yet this rapidly evolving medium has begun to cross over into furniture applications. This is a wonderful opportunity to see where, how and what they are doing. The meeting will be held at 6:45 at 1250 N Central Park Ave. Chicago IL 60651. Central Park Ave is 3600 west -1/2 mile west of Kedzie Ave and the studio is 1 block north of Division Ave. For Directions from I-290 or I-90/94 see our website at http://chicagohotglass.com/ or use this link to the directions page http://www.chicagohotglass.com/newpages/contact.html .

December 11 Armoires and Entertainment Centers - Lloyd Natof, Bill First, Rob Frazier and John Kriegshauser will show examples of Armoires and Entertainment Centers that they have made and talk about those pieces and general considerations that pertain to the design of small tables. Other members are welcome to join in. We will have both a digital projector and a conventional slide projector available. If people will send me their digital images by e-mail I can prepare a CD in advance of the meeting. Kriegshauser@iit.edu

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CFDA Meeting Report:

CFDA Minutes - September 11th, 2007
Meeting started at 6:52PM

Eleven existing members were present, with two new members welcomed, Dwayne Sperber and Philip Haywood.

Business Meeting:

Per Chris Brandel, we still need member profiles and photos to please be sent to Rob Frazier for inclusion in future newsletters.

And to promote interesting information for all, we'd like to create a 'suggested reading' list. If anyone has any books that they've read that would benefit other members please pass along the titles. We'll get that information circulated.

Dolly provided some updates on how the Ash Borer show is progressing. Apparently there was something of a communication breakdown with the Morton Arboretum, and they had some issues with our proposal about the show dates and duration. We were asking for a display period of several months for the show, and they were thinking of a timeframe of closer to two weeks. This led to some misunderstandings, as we approached this as a negotiation and they apparently thought that this was a do-or-die list of requests. Given the census on any given weekend we could reasonably expect that even a two-weekend show, around the Labor Day holiday weekend of 2008, will reach nearly fifty thousand people. Far more people than would generally show up at a gallery over a three month period. So the condensed timeframe is not such a bad thing.

The Arboretum isn't used to traveling shows, and so will not be able to take the lead on the logistics for the move process. We're going to need sponsorship as well as a coordinated effort for movers to transport the show items from venue to venue.

Per Edith Mackra, the Arboretum's Community Trees Advocate, they're looking for a 'leave-behind' item from us which will stay at the Arboretum after we have traveled off to other venues. They're hoping for an over scaled, outdoor chair. Think something along the lines of the really big chair that comic Lilly Tomlin sat in for her 'Edith-Ann" character sketches dating from the '60's and early '70's.

Dolly suggested that we have an internal competition to vie for the chance to design and build this leave-behind item. The winner will receive money for the wood.

The Arboretum's gift shop is also interested in related items to be sold at retail. Per some members' past experience with the gift shop, they buy the items outright and then mark them up for resale. This suggests that the price points need to be reasonable to enhance the possibility for making sales. The markup will be at the discretion of the Arboretum and we realistically won't be involved with that part of the sales math. So given that we can expect that our price will be bumped before it hits the public that means that we'll probably want to be conscious of the wholesale costs on our items. The contact person for the gift shop is Gay Anderson.

John brought up possibilities for venues to hit after the Arboretum's time expires. He suggested tht we might want to apply to places like the Botanical Garden, Navy Pier, the Evanston Arts Center or the Field Museum. And if anyone has other ideas they're certainly welcome. We would need to address show logistics and timeframes for the traveling part of the equation before we make any formal pleas.

Dolly suggested that Edith Makra, at the Arboretum, might be a great resource to tap for suggestions and contact names for other possible venues.

Matt Speer mentioned that the U.S. Green Building Council is having their annual conference in Chicago from November 7-9, 2007, with over 100 vendors.

Chris mentioned that the negotiations were still under way with the IDSA for a team show at the Cultural Center. Emily Grainsheimer is the contact at the IDSA and more information will be forthcoming.

Bruce noted that as soon as the IDSA gets permission from the Cultural Center for the show then a show committee needs to be established. Both this show as well as the Ash Borer show will need publicity as well as a website.

Finally, the Furniture Society currently has a Call For Entries for a show which will highlight the original prototypes for furniture items that have then been mass produced for sale. The show will be held in Purchase, New York.

Finally, congratulations go out to Matt Speer and his wife on the birth of their first son, Mitch.

ELECTION OF BOARD MEMBERS: As Chairman of the Board of Directors, John Kriegshauser reported the:

Returning board members standing for re-election are:

Antanas Abraitis, John Kriegshauser, Lloyd Natof, Sean Scott , Matt Speer.

Current board members who have not expressed an interest in standing for election are:

Burt Engelberg, Barry Newstat , Helen Maria Nugent, Pradeep Shimpi, and Maxine Snider,

Members nominated for the Board are:

Dolly Spragins, Jamie Lis Stevens , Lisa Elkins, John Jacqua, Phillip Haywood

Both slates were unanimously approved.

PROGRAM : EMERALD ASHBORER BLIGHT

Bruce and Erika Horigan presented details of their operation and details of the work being done relating to the emerald ash borer blight. Horigan Urban Forest Products is a specialist company that mills, dries and offers for resale trees that have come from the urban forest of Chicagoland. Rather than letting cut trees be mulched or sent to landfills they provide a means to let this wood maintain a higher use. Per their statistics, nearly thirty percent of all of the domestic wood consumption in the U.S could be provided for by using wood that is being culled from the urban forest. This huge statistic is starting to gain a bit of a toehold in the marketplace.

And because of their efforts, Bruce and Erika have found an inroad into the ash borer movement.

The ash borer evidently came to America inside pallets that were loaded inside of a container ship headed from China. Anne Arbor, Michigan seems to have been the original hot spot for this infestation.

The insect larvae hatch inside the cambium layer - the soft wet layer of a tree that is between the bark and the wood. The larvae feed exclusively inside this cambium layer, creating S-shaped galleries as they go. One tree may contain dozens of burrowing larvae. If these insects create galleries that wrap the circumference of the tree then nutrient flow up the tree stops. This kills the tree. And since 2002 nearly twenty million ash trees have been killed as a result. Interestingly, they leave the wood alone, unlike many other burrowing insects.

The insect spread so quickly because of the transportation of wood from state to state. For several years the affected area was somewhat contained. But then they found active beetles near the Morton Arboretum. It was transported to Illinois when a homeowner presumably brought his weekend excess firewood home with him after spending time in Michigan.

This is specifically why there are so many proscriptions against transporting wood and other agricultural products from state to state right now.

The ash borer has no natural predators in the US, as it does in China. This fact is a significant reason for the speed and extent of the spread. There is a predatory wasp that feeds on the ash borer beetle, but the USDA has not approved it for release inside our shores. It isn't convinced that there won't be even more catastrophic side consequences. And there is currently no chemical officially recognized by the EPA for mass distribution to kill the bug. So the matter is still being studied.

At present there are eighteen counties in Illinois in the affected quarantine zone. And that is regrettably expected to spread. Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as parts of Canada currently face similar, if not worse, conditions to the ones that we face in Illinois.

The US Department of Agriculture and APHIS are ultimately predicting a total wipeout of ash in the United States. They're collecting seeds right now against that outcome. If the outbreak does spread catastrophically the nature of the efforts will change. Once this theoretical point-of-no-return threshold gets crossed then the efforts to quarantine the bug will stop. All of the living ash in the US will be eventually killed and presumably the food source for the beetle will then disappear. After several years with no signs of remaining beetles then the seeds will be planted and a new crop of ash trees will begin.

Until then we live in a quarantine area. There are several steps that are taken in order to reuse the still-viable wood after a tree has been taken down due to the ash borer. The trees are felled prior to March, as this is when the insect changes from burrowing larvae form to flying adult. So the trees are felled while the insects are relatively immobile. Then the bark is cut off to a level an inch below the bark. The bark is sent into a tub grinder and the regulations stipulate that each chip needs to have at least two out of three sides less than one inch in size. This level of grinding ensures that the beetles are killed.

Bruce and Erika presented further slides showing the involvement of officials from the cities of Evanston and Wilmette at their mill and their kiln, as well as an overview of their operation.

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Member Profile:
Dolly Spragins

I have been making furniture long enough to know that making chairs is hard. I don't know this from the many chairs that I have made. Until recently I hadn't had the courage to even try one! But when I couldn't get a set of chair ideas out of my head, I decided to take the plunge and try and design and build a chair. The idea was inspired by Biedermeier veneer work. This most wonderful decorative style was popular in Central Europe from about 1815 to 1848, or after the Napoleonic Wars. Furniture of the period typically displays gorgeous veneers and simple classic forms without fussy ornamentation. No ormolu used here! Biedermeier looks forward to Art Deco nearly a century later. We now see Biedermeier as very upscale and classic, but at the time the burgeoning middle classes sought this look for their homes. And most of the furniture was designed for homes, not castles or palaces. My love of this style is quite obvious in my work, as you can see on my website www.dollyspragins.com. But how exciting it was to see the lovely Biedermeier show at the Milwaukee Art Museum last spring and have some real top notch pieces from the 19th century to examine up close. The side chairs and chaise longues at the Biedermeier show were stunning and inspired me to try my hand at last. On both forms, the amount of veneered surface isn't a lot, though still quite beautiful. And the cushions are typically supported with springs and little padding. More for show, than comfort. I decided to try and produce a chair that is a reading chair or lounge chair, something comfortable that you can stay in and relax. And, I've chosen to use the backs of the chairs and the side panels as opportunities for displaying beautiful veneer. I think of them as updated club chairs.

This first chair is Ash. Yes, wood from that poor tree, Fraxinus, whose existence in the U.S. is, so far, doomed by the Emerald Ash Borer. The arm rests are of solid ash and the sides and back are bleached and book matched European Ash burl. The bleached burl is very subtle and monochromatic. The back and sides'curves were created by pressing multiple layers of thin plywood over an inner framework. The taper of the back allows the sides to lean outward for a wider seating area. The cushions are made of washable suede. I am proud to say the chair is comfortable!

This next chair is a more "macho" color scheme. It is a bit more broad in the beam and aggressive in stance. Here I used Wenge and Mahogany, solid wood, for the arms, feet and top of the back. The veneer is mottled Makore. The Makore has a wonderfully alive chatoyance. The cushions are leather with an all down fill, so really soft and luxurious. And the back is visually arresting, I hope, from both the front and rear.