#HTE
Tools & Craft #32: One American Furniture Maker Goes Where the Money Is!
The other night I was walking back to the subway after 11pm, and on Madison Avenue I was pleased to see that Thomas Moser’s showroom has moved to the ground floor. There just aren’t too many traditional American furniture makers left, and as Madison Avenue has some of the most expensive retail rents in the world—we’re talking $500 to $1,000 per square foot per year—I’m hopeful that Moser’s business is good.
Moser, rightly so, has chosen the high end, and seeing his solid wood wonderfully-made pieces in a lit window at night next to stores with thousand dollar bathing suits and three thousand dollar purses made me hopeful.
Last Friday my son and I wandered by the 42nd Street Library, and once again the architectural woodworking caught my eye. The ceilings of the entire library are grand but, frustratingly, a little too high up to get a good look at:
So let’s take a look at some of the details that are closer by.
This bench below is one of many set all around the library and it’s very simple, at least in concept. The library was built between 1897 - 1911, well after the Industrial Revolution, so this bench would most probably have been made by machine. Looking at the detail, there is a lot of shaper and pin router work.
The big difference between it and public furniture from the post-Depression period is that while machinery was used in its construction the design, especially the details of the design, the flowing curves and worked moldings, go back to an earlier Victorian age of detailing.
The Bauhaus movement argued that something made by machine should also look like it was made by machine and there was no need for detailing. But this bench, from a previous generation of design, really uses machines to enable detail. The designers still want to entertain our eyes, even while creating a comfortable place to sit.
The last photo is of a bit of molding on a wall near the bench. In contrast to the bench, this must have been done nearly entirely by hand. I don’t know if work like this was done to blueprints and installed, or if the rough moldings were fitted, then taken down for carving.
In any case this is a tour de force of architectural carving. This period was at the height of decorative architectural detail in the U.S. and it shows. It’s just a decoration but it is solid - because it is at human height and it needs to withstand damage. It’s detailed without being prissy, and fairly big. And the building is full of it. In wood, stone, and plaster. This isn’t a single carving that is a centerpiece of something, it’s a fairly nondescript decoration in a room full of decorations and a killer ceiling.
Lastly, I must say I was very annoyed when a remodeling of our local library removed lots of indestructible oak chairs and tables and replaced them with…melamine. I don’t often use emoticons but if there was ever a time for it, this is it. :(
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This “Tools & Craft” section is provided courtesy of Joel Moskowitz, founder of Tools for Working Wood, the Brooklyn-based catalog retailer of everything from hand tools to Festool; check out their online shop here. Joel also founded Gramercy Tools, the award-winning boutique manufacturer of hand tools made the old-fashioned way: Built to work and built to last.
http://www.core77.com/posts/60160/Tools-n-Craft-32-One-American-Furniture-Maker-Goes-Where-the-Money-Is