CFDA Newsletter

Announcements:

Election of officers took place at the meeting of the Bd of Directors Nov. 5 and the results will be announced at the regular CFDA Meeting on Nov. 11.

The Exec Com. has discussed on several occasions over the past months the possibility of listing from time to time the titles of books, or articles, that members have found helpful or stimulating in their work. The editor would be pleased to list any the members can suggest. Here, from Chris Brandel is a start.

Do You Matter ?
How great design will make people love your company
By Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery

Program Schedules:

The program for the Nov. Meeting will be given by Chris Brandel on the design issues in the development of a line of rhomboid training tables.

The December Meeting will be a presentation by Lloyd Natoff of the furniture of Frank Lloyd Wright

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CFDA Meeting Report:

CFDA Meeting Minutes - October, 2008

Twelve members and three guests were in attendance.

Nevin Peters, Mark Wheeler and Garry Venable visited with us to see what the CFDA was all about.

Chris Brandel called the meeting to order at 7:10 PM. He kicked off by commenting how successful the Friday, 10/10 opening of the Deceptive Furniture and Furnishings show was. If any are interested in visiting, you can consult the Cultural Center's website for their hours. www.chicagoculturalcenter.org

Lloyd was not able to attend the meeting, and so we did not receive a statement of our accounts.

The Rising From Ashes show had an opening reception on Monday, October 20th. John, Dolly and Bruce delivered a presentation before interested visitors. Nearly fifty people had signed up for the dinner and presentation, many of whom were architects, sitting to receive AIA continuing education credits.

On October 7th the Ashes show will be moving again. A new selection of pieces will be on display at the Design Within Reach retail location known as "Tree Studios". Many of the pieces currently at Hafele will be moved to storage, with a different subset being moved to DWR. Volunteers are needed. If you haven't taken part in the move, please step up and do your part.

Congratulations went out to members Celia Greiner, Lloyd Natof and Jeff Miller. Each had a piece featured in Fine Woodworking's latest compendium titled 'FURNITURE, 102 Contemporary Designs'. This publication marks the first time since 1996 that Fine Woodworking magazine has issued a special furniture-only collection. So this is an auspicious honor and we wholeheartedly congratulate our three representatives for their work.

This magazine can be found not only at finer bookstores, but it's also been spotted on the racks at home improvement stores such as Home Depot. So if you haven't seen this issue already, it is easily obtainable.

John mentioned that there's been a bit of contact back and forth between the CFDA and Furniture New York. FNY is, essentially, the same thing as we are but located in the New York area. Visit them at http://www.furniturenewyork.org for more information, and to possibly continue the mutual handshake.

Chris mentioned that we should already begin thinking about possible topics for the next show. He suggested such things as a 'guerilla show' at NeoCon, with U-Hauls bunched together to form independent suites of furniture and collections from various makers in our group. It would be a bit like tailgating, but with nicer furniture and better food.

He also mentioned that he's been mulling over the idea of liquor cabinets as a possible Next Show Idea. If anyone has any thoughts on the subject matter, as well as possible venues, please bring them up at the next few meetings.

Matt talked about the furniture show in Milwaukee that he and Dwayne Sperber attended. Our member, Laura Drake, was in attendance and secured at least one sale (way to go, Laura!). The show was revealing in many ways. Much of the furniture was a bit homogeneous in nature from maker to maker. Taken as a '5000-foot-view' there were really only a few things that stood out as being truly unique. Work was generally high in quality, but flat in overall presentation. It pointed a flashlight on the continuing need to design new and original pieces and to think outside the traditional boxes.

We discussed SOFA, and generally why we're not showing there. Granted, it's a gallery invitational, but with our membership and the diversity of where we're generally represented, we might want to round-table this in future meetings as a nut that needs to be cracked . Dolly mentioned that she knows SOFA's graphic designer and may be able to being inquiries down that avenue. And as a tangent, we've had contact with Scott Patrian at Function+Art gallery.

Chris mentioned that in general the IDSA was a great organization to partner with for the current joint show. The experience of teamwork was good and formally asked the question of who else we may be able to partner with. We may want to actively seek show partnerships to more solidly lodge us into the Chicago design scene.

At this point we watched the new, longer cut of the Rising From Ashes video, done by Matt Seiler. It was nearly 16 minutes long and now stands as a more complete message during the shows. But this cut, even being longer, is missing one critical component: namely the SHOW. A third edit of the movie will be completed during the next thirty days, and it will include still images of all of the pieces from the show. This final version is expected to come in at about twenty to twenty-one minutes in length, and will stand as an independant ambassador for the show. We'll be able to send it out into the world as a self-contained encapsulation of the message, the makers and the work.

The business meeting concluded at 7:50.

Program:
John Kriegshauser - Sand Casting

John has a unique place in the furniture making world. As a faculty member at IIT he has access to equipment and technologies that many of us do not. One such example is a small furnace and the facilities for casting hardware for handles and other fittings.

When casting about for ideas for the handles for John's tansu cabinet entry in the Rising From Ashes show, he looked strongly at the hardware used by the Japanese. Hardware, as John points out, is a major motif within the Japanese furniture tradition. Bailed pulls are widely used.

He elected to forgo bails, and reduced the design to just functionally critical pieces. He knew he wanted a backer plate, and he knew that he wanted a protruding handle. He mocked up some examples from MDF and sprayed them with a metallic sheen to simulate what he was going for, and ultimately settled upon an agreeable design.

But the biggest issue in casting the handles was that there was a large negative space centered in the mass. Casting this handle would not simply be a matter of making an impression in sand and then pouring molten aluminum. The steps ultimately were many, and the process was an adventure. The idea and the execution needed to meet at a mutually advantageous place.

He mocked up an initial rendering and it revealed a wider margin of error than he was comfortable with. The second version was also not good. But in his third iteration he used the CAD package, Rhino, to experiment with the form and the individual sub components.

It took some emotional wrangling, but he got over the need to insert a finger into the handle's opening in order to operate it. Rather, you pinch the protruding plate between thumb and finger to pull the drawers open. This 'aha' moment solved some scale-related issues that he'd had and decreased the raw materials requirement as a collateral benefit.

It then became time to fabricate the drag (bottom) and cope (top) portions of the formwork. To this end, he tried using a CNC machine. Which, of course, required additional coding to produce the tool path. But his eventual results showed that the 'resolution' wasn't fine enough for the job. He was getting terracing instead of smooth arc shapes. And, of course, his blood pressure suffered as a result and he reverted back to ol' fashioned hand work.

He made an epoxy cast of a small dome shape. Then he cut for a 'mohawk haircut' shape above the dome. And thus the cope and drag sizes were born.

In the Japanese traditions, handle hardware are ubiquitously black. John wanted something different. Patination wasn't an option, as they wear off. And the contemporary look these days trends more towards aluminum. So aluminum it would be.

But John knew the working properties of aluminum all too well. It can experience as much as a 7% size change as it transmutes from liquid to solid. And it wants to pull away from the sidewalls of the mold. A thin shell develops and pulls away. This ulitimately tends to pucker and more closely resembles a raisin when it hardens.

To overcome this he needed to create a cone-shaped pour. The shape would be a bulbous shape at the bottom of a cone-shaped sprue. The sprue ends up serving as a reservoir of additional material to make up the mass created from the shrinkage.

Aluminum melts at 1250° F. John's furnace was set to a target temperature of about 1325°. This would let the aluminum reach a nicely pourable state.

A cope and a drag form were created by packing Petrobond sand into small boxes that keyed together. The sand was put through a screen, or "riddle", to get the clumps out and to fluff it up. Talcum powder was poofed onto the forms to create a resist. Then the cope and drag sides of the form were both packed very tightly and then carefully screeded. The Petrobond sand tends to stick to itself very well, so when the form is flipped the tight pack keeps everything together.

Sprues and risers were created by inserting tubing into the form. And at this stage the form work is ready for the molten aluminum to be poured.

At the end of this process what was revealed was a need for a lot of experimentation and cut-n-try approaches. John's intended finish was that sort of rough-ish texture that forms from the aluminum coming into direct contact with the grains of sand. Thus polishing and work with things like Dremel tools weren't an option for him. The work was to be done by the casting process, or not at all.

In all, it was an amazingly revealing presentation. For those of us who had never done any of this sort of work it was a rare glimpse into processes, thought rituals and occasional heartache that we'd never considered.

And no, John wouldn't entertain the notion of any side work, thank you very much.

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Member Profile:
Celia Greiner

I grew up in Chicago being exposed to art by my parents, a graphic designer and an arts administrator. Previous influential generations included tailors, florists, glassmakers, knitters-professional and otherwise. Not doing anything with your hands was abnormal and lazy behavior in my family.

My parents introduced me to art by dragging me and my sibling to various museums and that, at that time, boring old Art Institute which I came to appreciate later while attending school there. My favorite museums, though, were my grandparents houses. In Germany they had a teak cabinet that held a fine collection of china and crystal and after-dinner mints. I must have spent a lot of time with my head in there sneaking mints because I still remember the smell of it and the sound and feel of turning the key in the lock and opening the door. My other grandparents in New Jersey had doodads less fine but still precious to me and an itchy sofa and squashy bed and a squeaky Laz-y-boy with it's mechanisms. My German grandparents taught me that less is more if what you have is of high quality and my other grandparents taught me to make do with what you got and have fun with it.

I attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and majored in painting and drawing. Becoming bored with two dimensions and the art world I decided to study woodworking in order to make functional objects. I studied woodworking and furniture design at the Worcester Center for Crafts in Worcester Massachusetts. Now I build custom furniture and despite my former disillusionment with the art world, am very interested in sculpture.

In school I discovered that wood does not have to be rectangular. It has its limitations but can be almost any shape you want. When remembering a piece of furniture, say, from childhood, you don't remember what it looks like but what it felt like using it, such as the pieces in my grandparents homes. A man I know said that, as a boy, he would cry if he couldn't sit in the chair that had on the arms, lions heads with open mouths that he could stick his fingers into. When you use furniture you have a dialog with it. Handles, wheels, knobs, edges, and where they are in relation to your body can be inviting and comforting and they can be annoying.

I am interested in shapes and textures-the visual and tactile experience of an object, whether it is sculpture or furniture. Sculpture I find challenging yet liberating in that there are no standard dimensions I need to stick to like there are in furniture. The sculptures I have made are all very zoomorphic. They don't necessarily resemble any one animal but have animal-like qualities that either repel or attract and that express movement.

Sculpture allows me to explore shapes and textures and furniture allows me to employ them where they will be handled. Making something of high quality that I and the end-user can have fun with is my goal.

I reside in Chicago and when not working wood can be found in Humboldt Park with my beautiful greyhound.

For more of Celia's work her website www.celiagreiner.com has a broad selection of which these pictures are only a sample. Editor