Modern Design.

[dan sherman]

Hipster!

My hipster kitchen.

personally, I'd call that minimalistic.

[John Coloccia]

For example if you go to pirwi dot com (I know links are not allowed, so I wrote the name), they use mostly plywood cut by cnc.

I know this can be done without the plywood, cutting the strips, etc. I like the design, but I have doubts how to make the spacers or how to install them while the glue is drying. (search for the bench flex).

This other website about Danny Damerath dot com (no spaces) and look for tables. The table "Martin Too" is a great example of what I like on furniture.

That is the type of things that I like to discuss.

Links are OK to further the discussion, as far as I know:

http://www.dannykamerath.com/tables/#/martin-too/

If I understand the question you're asking, I think the answer is that it doesn't go with anything.



What do I mean...

I think it's pretty popular in the US to grab cheap furniture from, heaven forbid, places like Walmart. By and large, it's boxy, stuffy, boring design that would be at home in the 70s just as much as today. Where would I put a table like Danny's? It's far more popular in Europe to grab cheap furniture from places like Ikea. Yeah, Ikea does make some junk, but they also make some very nice, well thought out pieces as well. I have a modular bookcase from them. I built it exactly how I wanted, and it's very high quality, right down to the soft close drawer slides. Very high quality. We outfitted my wife's entire office with mostly Ikea furniture. It's sharp and very functional, not to mention inexpensive. They actually have real designers that make intelligent, and sharp looking, furniture. A table like that would be right at home in a home furnished with Ikea furniture and cabinets.

I think you'll see more and more sharp, contemporary design in the US as younger generations have to learn to do more with less, and I really do believe that the younger generation has more of an appreciation for elegant design than much of the older generations in the US do. I think more elegant design is really somewhat driven by the generally more crowded conditions in much of Europe. Much US style furniture is just completely dysfunctional in small home, especially where rooms are multipurpose.

Personally, we tend towards modern design in our home. We like the simple, functional lines. We cringe every time we've had to walk through a Raymour and Flannigan, or Ethan Allan. Nothing wrong with the stuff. It mostly seems well made. I just feels like I'm on a tour of a gigantic nursing home

Just my opinion.

[Fidel Fernandez]

Yes, I know the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Nothing wrong with well made furniture even if It is not in my style.

I was watching youtube during lunch hour and I saw this guy (he works with metal and wood logs), saved a burned log from Colorado.

The log was perfect from the outside, but the core was burned. It looked like a thunder destroyed the tree.
It was the perfect specimen for an sculpture, maybe a human body, or just an sculpture. The edges were ragged and they looked so nice to continue and make an expression.

Well, he removed all the internal burned wood (I wold have left some there as artistic expression). He rounded the edges, installed some LED lights inside, multicolor, etc. In my opinion that beautiful log was wasted and removed all the character and beauty.
He thought different and he was happy with the result.

I like more contemporary furniture, because it is exploring methods not used before together. All the woodworking concepts apply, but the result is different. You can carve, saw, mortice and tenon, etc. I also like more the clean lines look.

My problem is that I am self taught and I am learning and also a novice. I have so many questions and probably I follow the long and difficult path some times, because I don't know another way.
So if I find people working in the same type of furniture, they could have an answer to my questions.

[Chris Hachet]

I would like to try to build a modern piece of furniture. Just have not found the right piece. To me, a more modern design ethos indicates confidence about the future, and a lot of people have felt a good deal of uncertainty in our country. So to me it is almost political rather than aesthetic...

Back in the 1950's and 1960's even with the cold war I think a lot of people felt a lot more positive, hence stuff like Mid Century Modern design. I really wish we had stuff as cool as mid century modern 1950's era being done in our country today.

[Brian Holcombe]

IMO, they had a relative new process, new material and a huge consumer group who wanted something which represented them. Mass production as a whole is usually pointed at as an early impetus for modernism but in my opinion the beginning of modernism more specifically starts with the Bessemer process and the ability to mass produce steel shapes for architecture fallowed by the need to utilizing steel shapes for furniture. It was fallowed closely by the ability to mass produce molded plywood and fiberglass shapes.

[Kees Heiden]

So if I find people working in the same type of furniture, they could have an answer to my questions.

Just ask away. A lot of work methods are general anyway. Many modern designs are geared towards powertools, but you can use handtools too.

[Fidel Fernandez]

Chris, There is a lot of modern furniture build in USA. The problem is to find them.
i.e.
http://www.taylordonsker.com/gallery/
http://www.dannykamerath.com/
This one is mostly turning, but is modern http://davidbelser.com/
http://gregklassen.bigcartel.com/
http://www.gretadeparry.com/furniture2
http://www.michaelfortune.com/
http://www.danielmoyerdesign.com/
etc.

I have to search by them, because I don't see them in forums. I am not young, I am middle age (54), but I truly enjoyed this modern furniture/fine art produced in USA.

[Fidel Fernandez]

Kees,

Thanks so much, I will ask a lot of questions. Be careful what you wish for..

I tried to avoid power tools. I made furniture with my power tools, but I didn't feel any joy. It was more like I need it to finish quick.
Hand working gives me more joy, I use the power tools like the planer. I can do it by hand, but it is a lot of work.

[David Weaver]

personally, I'd call that minimalistic.

Yeah, except for the super pimp dad range in the middle there. Looks expensive. kees,....you pimp!!

[David Weaver]

If such a thing exists in furniture and woodworking, I think it's just a matter of taste/trend.

I was reading something a couple of months ago where someone from germany had popped into a trucking forum and began to berate american trucks (like peterbilt and kenworth custom types) because they were "1950s" style trucks.

His entire argument was that the european trucks were better because they were "much more modern".

Maybe we like things that are less temporal and modern here (Ok, that's almost a joke as we've become a consume and discard society) because the people over here are generally the poor immigrants from europe.

Most of the furniture I see for sale around here in galleries is modern type furniture with little hand work, and if there is any hand work, it's tasteless stuff like wedged mortise and tenon. That's my opinion of course. I don't care to see the ends of joints. The ask is is always high - slab chairs of purpleheart and curly maple for several thousand dollars, etc. I don't know if there is any bargaining involved when it sells.

[Brian Holcombe]

If such a thing exists in furniture and woodworking, I think it's just a matter of taste/trend.

I was reading something a couple of months ago where someone from germany had popped into a trucking forum and began to berate american trucks (like peterbilt and kenworth custom types) because they were "1950s" style trucks.

His entire argument was that the european trucks were better because they were "much more modern".

Maybe we like things that are less temporal and modern here (Ok, that's almost a joke as we've become a consume and discard society) because the people over here are generally the poor immigrants from europe.

Most of the furniture I see for sale around here in galleries is modern type furniture with little hand work, and if there is any hand work, it's tasteless stuff like wedged mortise and tenon. That's my opinion of course. I don't care to see the ends of joints. The ask is is always high - slab chairs of purpleheart and curly maple for several thousand dollars, etc. I don't know if there is any bargaining involved when it sells.

Depends on where you look. Look at a company like Rud Rasmussen, who produces the designs of architects Mogens Koch and Kaare Klint and they are producing stuff utilizing a combination hand work (true hand work) and machine work. I've seen how they produce dovetails for instance, which is to cut on the bandsaw but chopped by hand. They are using a shaped edge on their case goods and producing a 'finished' product by the standards of yesteryear. It's expensive, but definitely not at the price of gallery furniture. This is modern by it's definition but in my opinion a fine example of craft.

Being mostly interested in Japanese case goods, like Tansu, I dont find exposed joinery to be offensive unless it's done with high contrast woods (low contrast or tone on tone for me).

[Jim Matthews]

So how about this, Kees:




Modern or old?

Awesome is timeless.

kudos

[Jim Matthews]

The recent "Made in Massachusetts" exhibition of studio furniture at the Fuller Craft museum
may have illustrated the distinction more clearly.

It included traditional masterworks, as exemplified by Phil Lowe's federal period chair
to the fanciful silk-screened cabinets of Jenna Goldberg.

To my mind, modern design was exemplified by Gere Osgood's iconic desk.
Sleek, novel and fully functional.

Gere Osgood desk.jpg

[Brian Holcombe]

Jim, Did they have anything by Peter Follansbee, the Wainscot chair of his is pretty sweet. Not modern by any stretch of the term, but definitely craft.

[Sean Hughto]

Jim, you're nice. Thanks. My point was only that there are indeed folks on this board who make things other than pieces in classic styles and reproductions. Taste for it .... That's another matter.