Greetings Galoots,

I've been a fan of James Krenov's work for a while now and I decided to
attempt one of his small wall cabinet designs. It's made with a
mineral-stained poplar door and carcase of pine with walnut top and bottom.
Inside there is a bank of small drawers with varied kinds of wood for
fronts. There's also a shelf.

I enjoyed building it, but had my usual challenges of changing things in
the middle of the building process and thus making more fiddling for
myself. One of my main necessarily developed skills is also how to
fix screw-ups. No wonder projects take me so long to complete.

One of my confusions with Krenov is, "What are his cabinets FOR?" They are
beautiful but what in the world do folks possess to need cabinets like
this? Damned if I know. I just made one anyway. (Link to pics below--it
really did happen. Ha!)

Best to all Galoots,

Phil  E.
Pics:    https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBgQTQ

On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 2:07 PM Phil E.  wrote, and I
snipped:

>
> I've been a fan of James Krenov's work for a while now and I decided to
> attempt one of his small wall cabinet designs. .
>
> One of my confusions with Krenov is, "What are his cabinets FOR?" They are
> beautiful but what in the world do folks possess to need cabinets like
> this?
>
>
> I've read all his books, and could never answer your question.  Like
yours, his are beautiful, but I never know what I'd do with it.

My next project will be a cabinet of some type but it will be designed
around what I need to put into it, then try to make it at least attractive,
if not beautiful.


-- 
Kirk in Half Moon Bay, no clever saying today.


-- 
Kirk Eppler in Half Moon Bay, CA 

Your email has a totally obvious error in it.... Remove the word 
....NEED.....

Frank Filippone, tongue in cheek
BMWRed735i@g...

In answer to your question. People put into these cabinets anything they 
wish to - or nothing at all. If you have enough wall space, you just 
hang it up and wait for it to find its purpose. If you don't have much 
wall space, you stuff it with hankies, pencils and pieces of string not 
worth saving.

fwiw
Don

 �On 2024-03-08 3:07 p.m., Phil E. wrote:
> Greetings Galoots,
>
> I've been a fan of James Krenov's work for a while now and I decided to
> attempt one of his small wall cabinet designs. It's made with a
> mineral-stained poplar door and carcase of pine with walnut top and bottom.
> Inside there is a bank of small drawers with varied kinds of wood for
> fronts. There's also a shelf.
>
> I enjoyed building it, but had my usual challenges of changing things in
> the middle of the building process and thus making more fiddling for
> myself. One of my main necessarily developed skills is also how to
> fix screw-ups. No wonder projects take me so long to complete.
>
> One of my confusions with Krenov is, "What are his cabinets FOR?" They are
> beautiful but what in the world do folks possess to need cabinets like
> this? Damned if I know. I just made one anyway. (Link to pics below--it
> really did happen. Ha!)
>
> Best to all Galoots,
>
> Phil  E.
> Pics:    https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBgQTQ
>
>
> 
>
>

-- 

\u201cWe should feel offended or unsettled when we hear the word homeless not 
because we stigmatize those experiencing it but because we are ashamed 
at our own moral culpability in its existence and the continued harm it 
inflicts on the most vulnerable.\u201d Josh Kruger

\u201cTo argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, 
and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like 
administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist 
by scripture.\u201d \u2015 Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

Phil,

That's quite an accomplishment! You should be proud.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: oldtools@g...  On Behalf Of Phil E.
Sent: Friday, March 8, 2024 5:07 PM
To: oldtoolslist 
Subject: [oldtools] project finished

Greetings Galoots,

I've been a fan of James Krenov's work for a while now and I decided to attempt
one of his small wall cabinet designs. It's made with a mineral-stained poplar
door and carcase of pine with walnut top and bottom.
Inside there is a bank of small drawers with varied kinds of wood for fronts.
There's also a shelf.

I enjoyed building it, but had my usual challenges of changing things in the
middle of the building process and thus making more fiddling for myself. One of
my main necessarily developed skills is also how to fix screw-ups. No wonder
projects take me so long to complete.

One of my confusions with Krenov is, "What are his cabinets FOR?" They are
beautiful but what in the world do folks possess to need cabinets like this?
Damned if I know. I just made one anyway. (Link to pics below--it really did
happen. Ha!)

Best to all Galoots,

Phil  E.
Pics:    https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBgQTQ

Beautiful job on that cabinet, Phil.
Tell us more about the changes, screwups, and fixes if you can.
I know I always have my share of those on projects.

As far as what you put in them... I dunno,
I'd be more concerned with where I would put the cabinet rather than what's
in it.
We've been making and accumulating stuff for way too long and there is no
room left.

Darrell


On Fri, 8 Mar 2024 at 17:07, Phil E.  wrote:

> Greetings Galoots,
>
> I've been a fan of James Krenov's work for a while now and I decided to
> attempt one of his small wall cabinet designs. It's made with a
> mineral-stained poplar door and carcase of pine with walnut top and bottom.
> Inside there is a bank of small drawers with varied kinds of wood for
> fronts. There's also a shelf.
>
> I enjoyed building it, but had my usual challenges of changing things in
> the middle of the building process and thus making more fiddling for
> myself. One of my main necessarily developed skills is also how to
> fix screw-ups. No wonder projects take me so long to complete.
>
> One of my confusions with Krenov is, "What are his cabinets FOR?" They are
> beautiful but what in the world do folks possess to need cabinets like
> this? Damned if I know. I just made one anyway. (Link to pics below--it
> really did happen. Ha!)
>
> Best to all Galoots,
>
> Phil  E.
> Pics:    https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBgQTQ
>
>
> 
>
>
>

-- 
Oakville ON
Wood Hoarder, Blade Sharpener, and Occasional Tool User

Phil,

Beautiful work, beautiful design.  Congratulations.  If you enjoyed making it,
it has already justified it’s existence.

Last night I started hacking up some wood to make a smallish bookcase that will
hold probably seven feet of books.  The “What’s it for?" question would suggest
ferreting through the books we have and carting seven feet of books the donation
bin. Slippery slope — start justifying projects then you might start justifying
tools!

Cheers,

Kevin in rainy Chantilly

Hey, that's nice!
I especially like the spalted front.
-Mark

I put cabinets in mine
steve in brooklyn

Thanks to Galoots who  complimented me on my Krenov-style cabinet . Good
musings also about what this kind of cabinet is for. "Furniture as art" I
guess.

Phil E.

Greetings Galoots,

Phil E. wrote: "One of my confusions with Krenov is, "What are his cabinets
FOR?" They are
beautiful but what in the world do folks possess to need cabinets like
this? Damned if I know." 


They are for nothing. They are useless. In the old dialect phrase: "It's for
pretty."

There is nothing you can put into a Krenov cabinet, without immediately
discovering that you need more, and practical, cabinets to hold the rest. "The
rest" will, of course, be the remainder of what you put into the Krenov cabinet.
This goes even when he tells us that a particular cabinet was made for a
particular purpose for a particular customer. In one example he made a cabinet
with fitted compartments for the customer's collection of Oriental porcelain
bowls. So far so good. Krenov makes the cabinet. Customer takes delivery and, oh
so carefully, moves his collection into the fitted drawers and closes them with
a feeling of perfect joy completed. And what the hell does he do the next day?
Give up collecting? Go on collecting, thus ruining the perfect match between his
collection and his Krenov cabinet? Put up with inferior cabinets until is
collection has grown enough that he can order another perfect Krenov cabinet for
his collection annex? Or consider the cabinet Krenov made to hold a customer's
violin---I forget the details, but I'm assuming it was a violin and a violinist
worthy of a Krenov cabinet. But a cabinet for one violin? Did you ever know a
serious musician who had only one instrument? At least---the ones who have only
one instrument aren't plonking down the bucks for a Krenov cabinet.  And what
about all the little stuff that goes with the fiddle? Think of the clutter of
spare strings, beeswax, the bow--or, rather, bows----, all needing a place to
live and resisting tight regimentation....


Its not just that putting something in a Krenov cabinet humiliates it with base
functionality. What else can you put in the same room with a Krenov cabinet
except maybe one (just one) other Krenov cabinet? Add watch out if the room is
badly proportioned, or painted the wrong color, or incorrectly lighted; because
then that beautiful wisp of a cabinet won't look nearly as beautiful. I know
there are collectors of Krenov's work; in my imagnation they must be rich enough
to afford a mansion with one room per piece of furniture, and then an entirely
separate set of rooms to live in.

Don't get me wrong: I think Krenov's work is transcendentally beautiful. I love
it, though I probably couldn't live with it, even if I could afford the mansion
and so on. But the first step to undeerstanding it and really appreciating it is
to grasp the fact that it is utterly, completely useless. Then you can give up
the ego that says that furniture should toil at your bidding, and you can just
look, and look, and look at it. Like the caverns of Helm's Deep. This is clearly
a case which falsifies (in context) one of my favorite sayings, by the important
Arts and Crfts Movement philosopher and theoretician W.R. Lethaby: "Nothing
looks well that has been done for looks."

Tom ConroyBerkeley

That is all true. Krenov's writing and his work are indeed about "art" and
"design" and "pretty" of course but are at its root about the integrity of work
- of doing something ordinary like a dovetail or even a butt joint so well (seen
or unseen) that the work itself is the art.

Wonderful work Phil! Way to go!!

   I have a slightly different take.
   I once made a cabinet very similar.  Whether is was as artistic or 
not would be up to the beholder. All art is a subjective thing.

  For me it was about scoring some drop dead gorgeous blue stained pine. 
Fungus stained pine is not uncommon where I live. Its a downgraded wood 
compared to plain.
   But these 3 pieces I found was God on a bright spring morning, at the 
paintbrush. Richest blue and shimmering gold. With random streaks of 
dark chocolate accentuating the contrast.
It was the prettiest wood I had ever found at the time.
  I built the little cabinet just to show it off.

   I have adored James Krenov ever since I first became aware of him. 
But I can't help but think that sometimes the material presented itself 
first and the poetry came after.
yours scott

-- 
*******************************
    Scott Grandstaff
    Box 409 Happy Camp, Ca  96039
    scottg@s...
    http://www.snowcrest.net/kitty/sgrandstaff/
    http://www.snowcrest.net/kitty/hpages/index.html

Although I admire Krenov-style cabinets, I have long held the view that 
they are "useless" for me. Thomas' explanation was so hilarious that I 
laughed all the way through it and then laughed again the second time I 
read it.

However, I can present the other side as well. To me, Krenov-style wall 
cabinets share their general form and size with the classic Shaker wall 
cabinet. The Shakers were known above all for their simplicity and 
practicality, so I'm quite sure that they found these cabinets very 
useful in their homes. I think perhaps the main explanation for this 
would be that they had far fewer possessions than most of us do today.� 
They would not dedicate a cabinet to storing a single fiddle (as they 
would have probably called it), nor would they have a collection of 
Oriental porcelain bowls. A small cabinet could probably work well to 
hold many of the essentials of everyday life, the ones they wanted to 
have close at hand rather than stored in low chests, trunks or large 
drawers.

--Chris

Check out H-frame, the site for vintage Black & Decker Workmates
https://h-frame.weebly.com/