CFDA Newsletter

Announcements:

Tor Faegre, a longtime member of the CFDA, passed away during the night or early morning of October 13-14. A memorial for him is being held at the Evanston Friends Meeting House on November 7 from 3:00-4:30pm. 1010 Greenleaf Street, Evanston, IL.
Comments/reflections of Tor from some CFDA members are at the end of this newsletter.

Next Meeting: November 10 at Corosh

Program Schedule:

October 13: Hans Wegner: Foremost Danish Designer
John Kriegshauser will talk
about the work of Hans Wegner and his roots in the Danish modern design movement.

November 10: Your Business; Your Taxes.
Lisa Brophy, who is on our board and
serves as the CFDA attorney, will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of
various forms small businesses such as ours might take and the tax advantages of
each.

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CFDA Meeting Report:

CFDA Minutes - October 14, 2009

Eleven members and two guests in attendance

Chris Brandel called the meeting to order at 7:05.

John began with comments on the Milwaukee Fine Furniture and Furnishings show, held the first weekend of October at the Harley Davidson Museum and Conference Center near downtown Milwaukee. It seemed to be heavily populated with reproduction furniture, and the CFDA brought the highest concentration of studio furniture to the show.

Awards for Best In Show in eight different categories were given out, judged by members of ASID and regional newspapers. Of the eight possible awards, the CFDA brought home two of them. John's chair and Lloyd's cabinet both took B.I.S. honors.

Attendance was higher than last year, and serious collectors are among the shows' visitors. John reportedly spoke with two of them. So our work gained a very high level of exposure for the course.

We generally discussed our booth's overall look, and if we elect to bring our work up for future shows we'll have a few ideas in mind for ways in which we can do some things differently.

One conspicuous absence was the CFDA sign. Efforts are to be made to track it down and to do a critical analysis of its condition. Dolly volunteered to be the point person to track it down.

Lisa Pekkala, our board member who happens to be a tax attorney, discussed some generalities with us about our tax reporting responsibilities that will come as a consequence of becoming a 501-C-3 status. More will have to be covered, and Lloyd, as Treasurer, will likely be a principal player in further discussions. Lisa volunteered to help us navigate this path.

Bruce and Erika Horigan will be hosting an entrepreneurs group on the morning of November 7th, with a guest speaker. All are invited.

Anne Rashford, at the Museum of Science and Industry, reportedly has a single burr oak tree available as lumber. It was planted for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. They will be holding a show revolving around the use of this particular (and limited!) lumber. Look for a Call For Entries to go out in the coming weeks.

And the CFDA has narrowed its focus for topics for our next show. We're strongly leaning towards a re-exploration of sustainability as one possible topic, coffee tables as a second and forms of surface embellishments as a third. Chris mentioned that there is some interest at the IDSA to be part of this show, in whatever topic we select. More on this is sure to evolve in the coming meetings.

The regular business meeting concluded at 8:05 in a somewhat cold Corosh. They were having gas line issues the evening we were there and so we did not hold a regular presentation.

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Tor Faegre :
comments|reflections

And as of the date of the meeting, Tor Faegre had not yet lost his battle with leukemia. But he expired a short time later. We generally discussed what steps would be taken to extend an honor and our appreciation for his years of effort with the CFDA, and his body of work in general.

Since then, Tor has been on the minds of many of our members. It is with a collectively sad heart that we now turn our focus on paying tribute to a man who had touched so many lives, both in and out of the CFDA.

We will be rerunning Tor's January, 2008 meeting program this month as a part of that tribute.

Tor studied anthropology in school, with an emphasis on 'material culture'. This tract was a combination of ancient studies and the furniture that we built and used. Once done there he got into carpentry out of grad school. He was a union worker running the full gambit of roles and working conditions. Then about twenty years ago he began making rustic furniture for art fairs. Over time he gradually started turning down the carpentry jobs in favor of doing art fairs.

His reputation in the world of rustic furniture preceded him enough that stores such as the soon-to-be-opened Green Home Chicago (213 N. Morgan) came to him for pieces.

Tor described how this exploration had taken him to places like Mexico and India, where he learned in a one-on-one environment with native families. The language barrier proved a formidable challenge, but he patiently learned about a type of chairs named mudha, as well as types of stools.

Tor presented a wide variety of photographs from his travels, showing us that furniture forms are generally similar between societies. It's actually the choice in materials that change. His photographs of these mudha chairs bore this out, as some were made from reeds and wood while others were made from discarded and re purposed bicycle parts. Conspicuously, the form remained very consistent regardless of the materials used.

He also shared some Japanese furniture forms, showing that they used bamboo to build strikingly similar forms as the other two cultures. Interestingly enough, the Japanese revere bamboo but don't tend to use it indoors. Being a 'culture of the floor' the irony is that the Japanese aren't a good model for bamboo utilization in furniture.

Bucking this trend, Tor showed an elaborate stair railing that he designed and installed for a green-minded family located in Evanston and which was made from Vietnamese bamboo. Leave it to a Westerner.

Tor transitioned us to yurt buildings, as well as introducing us to the name Bill Coperthwaite. Bill was responsible for the resurgence of the yurt movement, and Tor knew and worked with him. Yurts are great barrel-shaped buildings which are traditionally covered with felt (which does not stretch). And so the construction methodology to build a yurt is significantly different than with, say, tepees or other forms that use stretchable hides. His intensive work on the art and architecture of these structures lead Tor to pen a book titled "Tents, Architecture of the Nomads", published in 1979 (and which is now out of print).

Tor passed around a maquette of a Mexican chair called an equipale. Again, this is considered a peasant chair and it also doesn't sport any Western-style joinery. The word 'equipale' is an old Aztec word and this form of furniture is pre-Conquest. Modern forms such as Deco club chairs would be a Western analog for this type of chair. It was made with a flat carved wooden latticework and was lashed together. It sported no Western techniques like mortises and tenons.

Tor shared more photos and it helped us see some of the many variations to the equipales. And it was interesting to see that the furniture form easily lent itself to morphing into both stools as well as rockers. And throughout this exploration we saw that the material choices seemed to change readily, but the basic form remains very recognizable.

Many of Tor's pieces show the evidence of his travels, sporting rawhide lashing as well as larger pieces of hide for seats and backs. His travels clearly influenced his work and he was continually inspired by these primitive forms as he designed and built his beautiful rustic pieces.

John Kriegshauser
Things I know (or think I know) about Tor's Life
Tor's father was an enthusiast for crafts and taught, at least later in his life, at Roosevelt University. His mother was a real character who, as a teenager, ran away from the Connecticut home of her intellectual, left-wing step father and mother to take refuge with Wharton Escherick, because she thought her parents were just too bourgeois.
(Escherick later revealed that he was bourgeois too, by secretly calling her parents!)

Tor early on found a mentor in Coperthwaite, a visionary yurt builder and crafts historian/practitioner. I understand that Tor met him as a teenager when Coperthwaite was a crafts instructor in a summer camp that Tor attended. They remained in contact throughout Tor's life, and on my last visit with Tor, a few weeks ago, Tor enthused so much about Coperthwaite's recently published book that I ended up buying a copy. Tor told me a story about the bizarre experience of traveling through Canada's Northwest Territory with Coperthwaite in pursuit of the ultimate snow shoe makers. Such was their relationship.

Tor studied anthropology in school and focused on folk furniture traditions. Many CFDA members will remember his presentations on the furniture of rural India and his program on the equipales (distinctive folk chairs) of northern Mexico, areas in which he traveled extensively. Some might have also attended his presentations at various Furniture Society conventions on twig furniture. But many might not be aware of his book on tents and their use in different nomadic cultures. I was impressed to see this work sited in a Dutch book about lightweight structures, so it has certainly gotten around.

On my recent visit Tor and his wife Sue Sommers entertained me with stories of their travels by bus in Afghanistan. I must be said that this trip was many years before the upheavals of the last few decades, but it must also be understood that this trip was Tor's idea of courtship. Sue said she was a bit skeptical at first, but in the end found the whole trip marvelous.

I've have come to know Tor just in the last 15 years. During this period he sometimes traveled the craft show circuit to sell his twig furniture. He often worked as a finish carpenter, and I particularly remember an ambitious staircase banister he did in a house in Evanston. He frequently gave classes in woodworking and twig furniture, and he did installations at many locations; the Morton Arboretum, the University of Wisconsin Madison and the Ryerson Nature Center are some that come to mind.

Tor never had a bad thing to say about anyone, and I have never met anyone that had anything but good to say about him. In fact, I have several times been introduced to people who, when they realized that I also knew Tor, began to gush about him and his work. Tor was something very unique and something very special. His passing is a great loss.

Dolly Spragins
To me his furniture/installations transcended archaic forms of indigenous builders. He was able to add his own spirit to his furniture. And the spirit was, well, sorry this sounds so corny, but, free."

Tor also once told me that he had had to work on being so free, so courageous. That he had had to "reinvent himself". I think his answer shows how modest he really was, how he sought to fit in and move easily with a very light tread. He didn't presume that these ancient people owed him anything, just the opposite. He tried to learn from them. He treated everyone with great respect, an odd accomplishment these days.

Bill First
I met Tor in 1998 when I first joined the CFDA, and from the very first meeting with him, I was touched by his sincere kindness and gentle disposition. Tor was a mentor to me because we often spoke of ways of surviving and adjusting in this difficult profession. He always had ideas and suggestions and we would discuss them in detail. I loved hearing his stories, he was so passionate about his work, his family, and his furniture. The CFDA was fortunate to have Tor as a member for so many years, and he was my friend, and I will truly miss him.

Chris Brandel
Tor was one of the first people I met in the CFDA and he made quite an impression on me from that time on. I have always admired his quiet observation of the situation at hand as well as his ability to really listen to you and offer great words of encouragement. Tor always seemed to have this great admiration for life and a seemingly unquenchable thirst for things that he didn't know yet. That being said, Tor always seemed to know a lot about a lot of subjects and always offered up tidbits of knowledge in such a way that never made you feel less smart, but rather feeling enlightened. To me, his furniture seemed to be an extension of himself. On first glance they seem calm and simple, but after a while you start to see the true depth and individual character of each one. For me their simplicity seemed to prompt me into a contemplation of where the piece really began: From the nature around us. The words above might be a little rough in structure, but it's the best I can do as Tor really held a place of distinction in my heart and mind that is hard to explain in words.

Celia Greiner
Dear Tor,
We only chatted a few times but I wish I got to know you better. I liked that you were so unassuming and, like a child, very interested and curious about the endless possible solutions to problems you encountered in your work. Yet, you kept things simple and were very resourceful. I wish there were more people like you and I hope I am one of them.

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Exhibitions of Note:

SOFA
November 6-8
Navy Pier, Chicago
There will be a special exhibition of work by Sam Maloof.
Sofaexpo.com

The Modernism Show
November 6-8
The Winnetka Community House in Winnetka, IL.
Winnetkamodernism.com

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