Scraping dried glue from the surface of a cherrywood panel newly released from the bar-clamps, I find myself thinking that maybe it’s time to say something about this translation of living trees into objects, into furniture.
I have to put out of my mind what is happening to the trees of the forest in order to do what I do, in order to have done it for the past forty years. Yet I have carried on. And isn’t that the story? Trees are beautiful and necessary for life on earth, and they are resource, employment for our hands. We show our love by cutting them down, killing them. Then we dissect their body and make work of their parts, shape things, build things, to atone for this barbarity.
Humans exist by creative destruction. There’s no evading that reality.
Most of all I love to work the body parts of the black cherry tree. I can make them into something beautiful for God and your living room through the ritual motions of my one-person wood shop. The craft is less magic or mystery than problem-solving and muscle memory. The joinery of thought, memory and feeling that a lifetime in woodworking requires is another story. I’ll have to make that up as I go. Learn on the job.
Because trees are tricky. As are lifetimes. Trickier than you’d think.
