April, 2005 - Dining Table & Six Chairs

"It was a cold miserable rainy day yesterday and we had built a fire to welcome friends. But after taking off their coats, we took them immediately to the dining room.  Even after exclaiming and examining your work in detail, they couldn't seem to leave it - even for the warmth and light of the crackling fire. (The fire burned down completely without ever being revisited!) In short, we sat around the table and visited for almost 5 hours! Near the end Jane noticed and said she wouldn't have believed that wood chairs could be so comfortable."

"We talked about your commission being an antique in the waiting and about being good stewards. And Tom made a very interesting and true observation. He noted that the work is neither masculine or feminine.  After a  brief discussion, we agreed that it is actually such a perfect balance of strongly masculine and strongly feminine expression that it could be called neither!  Isn't that another perfect quality of oneness?  After that discussion we all agreed that your work has a definite presence -- Tom called it "being alive" and I describe it as a "being"-- and we all agreed that it was live having one more in attendance during our evening of wide ranging discussion.  I suppose that it is reasonable to assume that the work will age in a way that reflects the occasions and individuals we bring to our table."

"People at the table unconsciously run their hands back and forth on the surface.  It's a motion half way between petting a dog and playing with the surface of water. No one seems to be aware of their actions (except we do it too, and are aware), and no one seems able to stop.  Even when we had been there all evening, each of us occasionally would run our fingers over the smoothness again.  It must be that experiencing the table with our eyes isn't enough, and so we are drawn to respond to it in another way as well."