*** CFDA meeting June 8, 2004.... Chris David, David Orth and Lee Weitzman on High Point****

- Scott Yerkey was featured in Sunday's Chicago Tribune Magazine, May 23rd. Nice exposure!

- The Merchandise Mart sales team has offered CFDA space at the NEOCON show, June 14-16. 

- Program Schedule (John Kriegshauser)

Tuesday, June 8—The High Point Show. Chris David, Lee Weitzman and David Orth, who just back from this spring’s show, will explain what it is about. Each of them has gone there multiple times with the intension of doing business, and each has a uniquely personal take on the show. This program will provide the participants an opportunity to compare their experiences with one another, and the rest of us to get an inside look at this nationally important show.

Saturday, July 17—Wood Miser Saw Milling. Yes, that’s right, a change to a 9:00 Saturday morning format! Ron Meyers will give us a tour of his saw milling operation and answer questions about custom saw mill work. This will be at Ron’s lumber yard in West Chicago near the Fox River. A map will be included in the next newsletter. Once again, this is a special opportunity. Particularly if you have any interest in native, non-commercial wood species or air dried material, this is a must see!

Tuesday, August, 10—Design Talk. Bring your latest project, drawings of your latest project or models of your latest project. Get feedback and helpful criticism from people who care!

In attendance: Antanas Abraitis, Chris Brandel, Robert Frazier, Josip Goreta, Joso Goreta, Dan Kowalik, John Kriegshauser, Ron Meyers, Patrick Moloney, Barry Newstat, Pete Radecki, Matthew Speer, Curt Vevang, Dave Waycie.

Announcements:

· Saslow Show October 5-November 13 (This will be at the same time as the Sofa Show). Matt Speer wants ideas for a show theme and help with publicity. Photos of work or drawings will be due in mid-August, so Judy can select the 12 or so participants she has room for.

· Function/Art Gallery wants to expand its July show into the neighboring space. CFDA Members who want to be included in the show must pay the rent for this additional gallery space. If ten people participate the cost will be about $250 per person.

· Jean Fisher at the Mart says that complimentary space might still be available at Neocon.

· Pete Radecki is looking for images of the Arlington Show. Contact Pete if you have any.

· Drew Kates, a maker of mosaic tile table tops, is looking for bases to compliment his work. View his line at akates3@earthlink.net. Contact him if you are interested in his business.

Presentation:

Barry Newstat Barry characterizes himself as a mid-career furniture artist. He is just returned from three months as an artist in residence at the famous Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado. While there Barry had a small scale, personal epiphany that has caused him to re-approach his work.

Early on Barry admired the Arts and Crafts movement. He showed us images of one table in particular that derived from that aesthetic, but the influence of this movement extends beyond this table to pervade most of what he does. For example, Barry prefers pure solid wood construction; he uses of hand tools and hand applied finishes. He showed an image of a walnut piece that he ebonized employing the old chemical method of soaking steel wool in vinegar, then wiping the resulting solution on the wood. He swears by his own oil finish, which he makes by mixing equal parts of tung oil, boiled lindseed oil and urethane varnish. With the passage of years Barry said he has come to rely less on power tools, evolving instead to an increasing reliance on hand tools. In other words, he's an Arts and Crafts guy.

His designs, he said, were often about the wood, and he showed a number of cabinets in which the floating panels in the doors partially exposed their rough edges. Yes, this meant that there were gaps between the panel and the frame, but this practical shortcoming was, in Barry's view, completely offset by the drama of the panel's grain pattern and its exposed rough edge.

Barry has aspired to make his pieces in multiples, but he finds that he quickly tires of repetition and cannot resist tinkering with the design. In fact, the designs evolve so rapidly that he makes series rather than multiples. He showed pictures of series of rocking chairs, one-door cabinets and tables. Barry has returned to these three furniture types consistently throughout his career. He sells these directly to clients or through the Saw Bridge Showroom.

During his residence at Anderson Ranch Wendy Maruyama, the prominent furniture artist, who teaches in Southern California, urged Barry to cut loose and experiment. His two latest tables, which he physically brought to the meeting, were significantly bolder and more powerful than his earlier work. They were sculpted in the round and in deep relief, avoiding flat planes altogether. In fact, Barry is so committed to this course that, when he returned to Chicago, he gathered up the templates for his old designs and burned them in the Weber Kettle. Barry, formerly committed to natural finishes, is now experimenting with milk paint! Who knows where this will end?

A Craftsman Thinks About Design: The Return to Ornament

In the late 19th Century the Viennese architect Adolph Loos made the fabled pronouncement: "Ornament is crime." It made sense to proclaim this towards the end of the Victorian Era, a period given to dense and capricious ornamentation. Loos's opinion gained currency until it was essentially codified into Modernist thought at the Bauhaus. The feeling was that "form should follow function," and that an object's inherent shape was legitimate and pleasing. The materials of which the object was made needed to be honestly expressed, and the processes of manufacture would leave their distinctive signature on the composition. The resulting object did not have to be camouflaged beneath a layer of prettifying ornament.

Recently a very talented, very Modernist architect friend of mine sent me some cabinet drawings. He had borrowed a corner detail used by Mies Van Der Rohe in his steel frame buildings and translated it into an edge detail for a group of mahogany cabinets. Though I assured him that I thought the cabinets would be handsome, I couldn't restrain myself from taunting him. In the days of the Bauhaus the precepts of good design included directness, simplicity and necessity. Incorporating this decorative edge detail would make the cabinets heavy, complex and expensive, so I teased him about it. He responded by saying, "Modernism isn't about those things anymore."

Isn't about those things anymore? I have been chewing on his response ever since. Upon consideration it becomes clear that the virtues of simplicity, directness and necessity are essentially the virtues of good engineering. Applied to a design problem in their unalloyed purity, these virtues would result in one best, obvious, generic solution. In architecture and furniture design this is not a happy outcome.

Instead, people tend to prefer designs that are distinctive and which have personality and novelty. Hard-line Modernists feel the tug of these preferences as well. However, the Modernist credo will only permit designers to express these preferences in certain ways, ways that do not include applying ornaments. Instead designers can play with proportional relationships, alter the balance between the elements of the object, select interesting materials, vary the color scheme and express the structural elements of the object. Also, the designer can influence the appearance of the object by selecting the structural system or process of manufacture. In addition, a designer can reach beyond these fundamental strategies by invoking precedent. If a decorative detail is borrowed from a famous or trend setting designer, that detail will likely be permitted, in somewhat the same way that legal precedents extend the law.

Modernist designers often say that to make something look simple is very hard. This is because the virtues of simplicity and directness have evolved in the designers' lexicon to mean visual simplicity and visual directness. The fact that complex and circuitous construction techniques must sometimes be used to create objects that look simple means to me that simplicity has become merely a decorative effect. I am sure that I am not alone in thinking that, if design is exclusively concerned with visual effect, we have come full circle. Manipulating the appearance of objects, whether by convoluted construction techniques or by applying ornament, amounts to essentially the same thing. "Ornament is Crime," well, maybe not anymore.