Jfinch

I always get a smile when I read the passionate responses to comments like Tom Loesser’s. I taught woodworking for 25 years in a very successful college program that focused on the skills, rather than the “design”. I have been a FWW subscriber since the first issue and have always used it as a resource. The content has varied over the years from the pretentious to the practical, as editorial policy changed. My students took from it what was useful and ignored that which was not.I also used Woodwork and Woodsmith and other popular periodicals for the same purpose. At the same time I required them to read articles in WWP, CWB, FDM and other trade publications so that they could see what the furniture and architectural woodworking industry was all about. Some of my graduates have been successful as independent furniture makers, but that is a tiny market. Two of my graduates were, in fact, art students from the UW who enrolled in my program for a year just to learn how to do proper joinery and use machines. Most of them have found work as skilled craftsman (and women) building architectural woodwork, yacht interiors, custom cabinetry, private aircraft interiors and other very “fine” woodwork. Many of them have perfected joinery skills they first read about in magazines I have never been a fan of “art furniture” because I think it is silly, but I understand the desire of the artist to bend reality for the shock effect. (Of course, Frank Lloyd Wright also designed very visually pleasing chairs that are functionally awful.) I once asked Skip Johnson (from the very same UW Art Dept as Tom Loesser) why he made such stuff. He just laughed and said “because people buy it!” I don’t have any problem with Mr. Loesser, but I think he needs to take a deep breath and get over it.

Jerry