For over 40 years I have made my living building boats, doing historical renovations and rejuvenating old buildings and houses. Sometimes I do commissioned furnishings and ‘high/end’ woodworking. But, I can't keep my eye off a beautiful plank of wood and I relax designing and using old joinery skills to make inlaid tops, hand dovetailed corners, unique handles and such. I spend a lot of time in my home workshop making chests and humidors. No two are alike, and they are fully handcrafted and finished.
"Me mother was a mermaid, me father was King Neptune.
I was born on the crest of a wave and rocked in the cradle of the deep.
Seaweed and barnacles are me clothes.
Every tooth in me head is a marlinspike; the hair on me head is hemp.
Every bone in me body is a spar, and when I spits, I spits tar!
I'se hard, I is, I am, I are, sir!"
I have found that a ‘good box’ suits many uses…end tables that store sentimental stuff; coffee table-height chests that hold record collections; canvas covered chests that mimic civil war era to hold camping gear and prop one’s feet comfortably; cedar chests that store woolens and grandma’s furs for posterity; ‘gentlemen’s jewelry’ chests; sailors chests with secret compartments; chests for the foot of the bride's bed; Spanish cedar-lined boxes for smokables.
My wife says I'm obsessed with making boxes; I like to think of it as my useful-art expression. Why waste the space between four legs?
