Artist's Statement:

Good chair design combines comfort and aesthetics together with strong
engineering. In my chair designs, I attempt to mimic the forms in nature. For example, the bracing and the angles I use to attach the bar stool legs to the sculptured seat resembles the splayed legs and tendons seen in the cat family or a praying mantis, beautifully positioned for stability.

The chair frame and legs gain their strength from the feather-jointed corner blocks in the frame. Each corner block consists of up to 36” of linear glue surface (up to 6 rows of tongue and groove joinery). The strength provided by the corner blocks eliminates the need for rungs between the legs.

I use American cherry, maple, walnut and Honduras mahogany wood that highlight the design of the table and chairs. I am more concerned with woods that highlight the design rather than the design showcasing the wood.

The attention I pay to detail can be seen in the way I cut the wood. For example, by placing the legs top-to-top on a board, I'm able to ensure that the grain of the wood in the legs, when attached to the chair, will reflect one another. You can see the beauty of this effect in the accompanying photos showing the chair legs and the top of the chair.

Biography:

I began woodworking in 1970, as an exchange student in the mountains of Telemark, Norway. There I apprenticed with one of the first graduates of Norway's school of acanthus furniture woodcarving. Later, I returned to Norway and to my carving teacher during semester breaks while studying art history at the Christrian Albrecht's University in Kiel, Germany.

I received a BFA degree from the University of Iowa. During the 11 years I lived in Iowa, both as a student and a furniture maker, I worked on and off as woodcarver for different furniture shops at the Amana colonies.

In 1986, I received a Fulbright alternate status to return to Norway to research Norwegian carving. But an opportunity suddenly arose that would take me, my wife and two cats to Seattle for a carving job that comes once in a lifetime. On a visit to Seattle, I had happened upon a shop that had just won a bid to restore a section of the Episcopal Diocese in Seattle, which suffered fire damage. Advertisements for furniture carvers had been placed in newspapers in England and France; the shop was happy to win the bid and hire me to help with the restoration.

After the Diocese job I spent years working with interior decorators and architects. I have work in the Washington Athletic Club and Sunset Club of Seattle, the Benton Hotel in Portland as well as many prominent homes in the west coast, Hawaii and Alaska.

In 1992, I became a member of Northwest Fine Woodworking, a membership owned furniture gallery in Pioneer Square, Seattle. At that time I added a limited production line of 2 chair designs with an oval dining table to my work. These designs I offer are both classical and timeless in shape. I have enlarged them; designed settees from their shapes and now have recently designed a bar stool with a sculptured seat. I have work in almost every state, Canada and Mexico as well as Europe and Asia.

In 1998, I graduated from a shared 6,000 ft. shop in downtown Seattle to a sound proofed shop and barn on my own property, which also houses my home on almost an acre, still within the city limits of Seattle.

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