My First Design
Gary Rogowski, a master woodworker and furniture designer (and longtime Craftsmanship collaborator) reflects on how his first handmade bench came into being.
Dear Friends,
Sometimes a creative life begins not with a grand plan, but with a scrap or two of raw material and a moment of curiosity. In today’s featured article, master craftsman and woodworking instructor Gary Rogowski recalls how finding a discarded slab of Douglas fir and an old hand plane became the starting point for a lifelong practice.
Rogowski’s first attempt at a handhewn bench may not be part of his extensive professional portfolio today, but it endures as a humble monument to the innate human impulse to “make something.”
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Todd Oppenheimer
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Craftsmanship Magazine
My First Design
by
My first attempt to design a seating piece came about from a piece of wood I found. I discovered this slab, along with an old wooden hand plane, around the side of a house where I stayed. A half-round chunk of Douglas fir had split off from a log.
At the time I had no idea what the wood could be used for or what the plane did, but it seemed wise to keep them both as I considered my future. Maybe they would prove useful.
Two years later, I decided to teach myself how to build furniture. Chairs and benches seemed to be useful items, so I attempted to make a bench with that slab I’d found. I thought its shape perfect. To make the base I took some two-by-fours and glued them into two columns. This, my first seating piece, I still keep as a reminder. Its shape charms only its maker, I fear.
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