CFDA Newsletter

Announcements:

The next meeting will be August 21st at 10:30am
at Gearge Pagel's Column Company
9910 W. 190th Street -Suite H
Mokena, IL 60448
www.pagelswoodcolumns.com

no August meeting at Goose Island
The next business meeting will be on September 8 at Goose island.

Program Schedule:

April: Chippendale and Rococo
Lloyd Natof - Who knew that Lloyd was keen on this period? I can't wait to hear what he has to say!

May: Turning: From Craft to Art Form
Richard Dlugo - Over the last 50 years turning has evolved from a folksy craft into an art from that appeals to serious collectors. Richard will chart how this has come about.

June: Creating High Quality Images of Your Furniture - Bill First
Who isn't challenged to obtain promotional pictures of their work? Bill will share the insights he's gained from his continuing romance with photo manipulation software. If you're going to be in the game, you need to see this one.

July: TBA

September: TBA

October: TBA

Unscheduled Programs:

Dolly Spragins: Furniture of Ruhlmann.

Gary Venable: The intricacies of hand plane making and using revealed by a former student of James Krenov, who, not surprisingly, is a meticulous and exacting woodworker.

Bridgette Buckley (with help from John Kriegshauser):
Hans Wegner and Danish Modern furniture design

Sketch Up-Curt Vevang:
Curt will demonstrate how to use this simple, inexpensive and powerful image creating software. The meeting presentation will be followed by a Saturday training session where attendees can come away with real know-how.

Critical thinking about craft - John Kriegshauser:
This will basically be a book report of Glenn Adamson's latest book: "Thinking Through Craft" which is a survey of the evolution of critical attitudes towards craft during the last century.

Chair Design- Jeff Miller:

Jeff could expand more on this subject in which he has unique expertise.

Furniture Designed by Architects- Jamie Stevens:
Architects commonly do furniture design as a second calling. Let's hear how they approach the subject.

Metals Related Subject- Ross Fiersten (and perhaps Elizabeth Hayes?):
We need coverage of this under-served topic.

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CFDA Meeting Report:

CFDA Minutes - March 16, 2010
17 members in attendance

Dolly Spragins called the meeting to order at 7:05. She invited Matt Seiler to begin with a summary of his trip to Ann Arbor, Michigan, on 3/8 where he attended a Wood Utilization Team round table seminar. That included representatives from seven states and focused on the hurdles and challenges that need to be cleared in order to bring urban timber into FSC certification, and thus eventually into the commercial lumber market.

She then detailed some of the highlights of her trip, with John Kriegshauser, to Purdue U. on 3/9-10. They brought elements of the Rising From Ashes show to a conference of the Ash Symposium of North America. And reportedly it was quite a hit and utterly on point.

Bill First recapped the trip to Tor and Sue's house, where Tor's material supplies were divvied up among the attendees, with the remainder having headed to a local land fill. Sue was reportedly very grateful for our turnout and efforts.

Rich Dlugo will be sharing the finer details of the CFDA online survey once his computer issues get sussed out. Stay tuned for that.

The Morton Arboretum is holding a sales-oriented event at the end of April and has invited the CFDA to provide small handmade goods for a selling table.The event will be inside the same room where the RFA show was displayed. Tables will be somewhat small, but any interested parties need to contact Rich Dlugo as soon as possible.

The Sustainable show committee is still forging the details for, and determining the logistical tactics for the show. To date we have several interesting possible venues, but in each case they need to see a complete, presentable show before they'll OK it for the space. So we likely would need to bring this show into being in one venue, and then present it for consideration for the other, high-impact venues.

John covered the current thinking on the memorial for Tor Faegre. The CFDA will be granting $750 for a winning design to build a memorial bench for Tor. Ideally it'll incorporate Tor's naturalistic aesthetic and his use of twiggy materials. Recent emails from John buttress the need for us to bring some really strong designs to the next meeting. The bench will be donated to one of the several nature reserves that Tor was so fond of.

The upcoming October Fine Furniture and Fine Furnishings show, in Milwaukee, will cost the CFDA $3,100 for the aggregated booths. Members who have committed to display in the booth can expect a prorated share of that fee to be passed along to them. Current thinking is to allocate a per-square-footage price tag to ensure fairness between large and small pieces.

In member news, Bridgette Buckley was published in the Chicago Social Magazine, highlighting her work.

The business meeting concluded at 7:30

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Program:
LISA ELKINS
Sustainability and Greening for Your Furniture Products

Lisa describes herself as a LEED certified architect who dabbles in furniture. She and her architect husband work together and design environmentally friendly spaces for private and commercial clients. Her work gives her a unique perspective on the area of Green and sustainability.

She observed that Green, as an adjective and as a noun, is sort of a soft, fuzzy and somewhat incomplete idea.   Many things are believed to be 'green', but the details behind them are often obscured in the mist.     "Sustainable' is sort of the bigger picture to 'green', and has handles that we can actually grasp and hold onto.    Her focus for the evening would then center more on the idea of sustainability.

In terms of architecture, from 2008 to 2010 the US saw a five-time growth in Green Building. LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is one of the main certification bodies in this effort.   They promote sustainability both in terms of the fabric of the structure, but also in terms of its ongoing environmental and human impact.

LEED's five components include Site Planning, Water Management, Energy Use, Material Use and Indoor Environmental Quality.   Notice that there are no categories for furniture.    The decor inside the structures bears little or no impact for LEED certification. What there is specifically relates to permanent built-in elements only. And that's notable, as there have been some marketing claims to the contrary.

For our part of the indoor spaces, we would need to consider the use of low-VOC adhesives and sealants, paints and coatings as well as composite woods and agricultural-based construction products.

Materials and resources that are considered 'sustainable' include material reuse, recycled content, the use of regional materials, rapidly renewable materials and certified wood.   The time frame that's considered 'rapid' in that part about rapid renewal is considered to be nine years.   Regional is considered to have originated within a radius of five hundred miles.

We talked a bit about the use of urban timber, which is certainly a noble pursuit that seems to have exceptionally obvious benefits. But the US Green Building Council (USGBC) is exceptionally slow to react to new developments. As it stands today there are no considerations granted to the reuse of urban-sourced timber.

In terms of innovation and design, the USGBC requires out-of-the-ordinary detail in terms of documentation, and requests for consideration, if granted at all, will come at a snail's pace.   They simply are slow to consider the situations.

At this point Lisa passed around samples of sustainable building materials and shared with us some photos of her sustainable building projects. One of the high impact samples that went around the room was a pricey, but visually striking product from 3Form ( http://www.3-form.com ). A lot of sidebar discussion was exchanged over it.

And we discussed that there is a resource called the Rebuilding Exchange, located at 3337 W. 47th Street. There you can find all manner of architectural items that you can buy and incorporate into your projects. And certainly there is still Green Home Chicago, located at approximately 213 N. Morgan in Chicago.

Lisa's program ended at 8:25, leaving us all with a refreshed view of how to consider the sustainable idea and with some great ideas about new and innovative products to perhaps incorporate into our designs.

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Exhibitions of note:

Scott Burton
Art that blurs the boundaries between furniture and sculpture.
Ongoing
Bluhm Family Terrace at the Art Institute of Chicago