Shaker Nightstand, (Cherry)

.






"I did a little more carving in Sudbury, but not very much. It wasn’t until 1982 or 1983, when I was contemplating retiring in another year or two or so, that I again began thinking about making things of wood. This time I wanted to do some cabinet making. I bought a Mark V Shopsmith and turned the Sudbury basement into a woodworking shop."

"By 1984 Zan was fighting ovarian cancer and I retired from Cryovac in order to have more time to be with her. We were together a great deal, but two evenings a week I drove over to Lexington to take a course in woodworking at Minuteman Vocational School. I thought I would like to make a tall clock, but Zan asked me to make a hutch, something she had always wanted for the Sudbury dining room. At the vocational school each student had to submit a project to make under the instructor’s guidance, and it had to be something not too complicated. I decided to make a Shaker style nightstand out of cherry wood just to get the hang of things and learn how to use the various woodworking machines. Then I would make the hutch."

.

Laptop Desk (White pine, stained)

Secretary Desk (Cherry, copy of an antique circa. 1880)

Newbury Mantel Clock (Cherry)

Grandmother Clock (Cherry)

"After I completed the nightstand I bought a lot of good cherry wood plus a set of plans for an enormous hutch for Zan. It was a really ambitious piece of furniture. I started it by cutting several pieces of cherry to the correct dimensions. On the night of March 15, 1984 I came back from the voc school class and sat with Zan on her bed, talking about the hutch and what I had done with it that evening in the class. She listened, asked questions, was very peaceful, and smiled a lot, her eyes as luminous as ever. She died around 4 o’clock the next morning."

"After the initial shock of her death began to diminish I decided to do some cabinetmaking, instinctively realizing it would be a means of solace. I had all that great cherry wood for the hutch, but by then I understood that the design was much too big and heavy for that Sudbury house. My thoughts went back to building a tall clock. I bought a set of plans for a grandmother clock and began making it, although I felt a little guilty about it being a clock instead of a hutch."

"I wanted a stained glass door for the clock so I took a course in leaded glass at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. The instructor told each of us in the class to make an original drawing measuring about 14” x 12” suitable for creating into a leaded glass piece of art. I told him I only wanted to make a simple door for my clock. He wouldn’t let me. He said after I made the original drawing piece the clock door would be a piece of cake. So I drew a Greek monastery in memory of Zan’s love for all things Greek (following her first trip there in 1973), the instructor approved the design, and I made it of stained glass as a window hanging. The instructor was correct about the clock door because it turned out to be one of the easiest parts when building that grandmother clock."

.

Grandfather Clock

"That clock inspired me to design and build my own original, one-of-a-kind grandfather clock with a changing moon-phase face. Other pieces of cabinetry followed, all in the latter ‘80s and early ‘90s, and were given to my children and grandchildren: a two-drawer oak filing cabinet, a bleached oak coffee table, a plain oak coffee table, a wooden-hinged lap desk, a cherry whatnot shelf, and an exact replica of an antique family heirloom secretary desk (the original was built ca. 1880 and belonged to my father’s family)."

"While living in Danbury, Connecticut, and Fort Myers, Florida, I did more woodworking and glass crafting as gifts for friends and family: two stained glass window hangings, picture frames, a stool, a wooden carrying case, an elaborate spice cabinet, and a green wall clock."

.

The Artist