"I was surprised with recent threads about George Nakashima. It seemed
 that as many Galoots didn't know who he was as knew. And he is a prime
 example of why reading is important. If you haven't read anything
 about Nakashima, you know nothing about the soul of wood and how to
 give your Galoot made furniture soul. Anyone can reproduce soul-less,
 form furniture. Anyone can create "styled" furniture. But do you know
 how to take the soul of a piece of wood and use it in furniture so
 that it remains?"

"might as well use glued-up sawdust, er, osb, or plywood."

Hello Galoots: ---Reading IS important, I'd have to agree with
that---pretty soon here I'm gonna go re-read Eric Sloane's introduction
to "A Reverence for Wood".

   ...btw, it seems to me that the soul of wood is SO irrepressible, and
   SO durable that it survives being ground into sawdust and glued back
   into MDF. The reason people use the stuff, I believe, is that it
   still has many of the qualities of wood in it, in spite of some
   serious insult and lack of respect. Plywood, of course, is extremely
   soulful; one of the things that visitors love about master craftsman
   Sam Maloof's home is the crazy fir plywood doors on his cabinets.
   Wood is shredded into pulp, cooked into soup and baked into paper and
   cardboard---the soul survives. If trees could have the blues, it
   would be the paper products who sang 'em best...safe to say that
   those who don't feel the power in a Nakashima table aren't likely to
   be engaged by the soul and competence of a fifty-year-old cardboard
   box. Their loss. The soul is infinite and fills all the vessels that
   contain it. Some believe that God put trees here as part of our
   bounty on Earth, others believe that trees and everything else are
   stages in a random sequence of events; I won't argue with any of
   them. But I will contend with those who say that trees have no soul;
   and dispute those who say that OSB and plywood ain't got soul: I beg
   to differ, they
do. Tortured and mutilated, yes, but still WOOD, still strong and
    enduring, still the flesh, bones and souls of trees doing in death
    just what they did in life: good for all and harm to none.
    sincerely; GAM, West Seattle


=====
"Take a piece of wood--plane, sand and oil it and you will find it is a
beautiful thing. The more you do to it from then on, the more chance tht
you wil make it worse." Tage Frid


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