Peter
began his furniture building career intrigued with building small
cabinets. He wanted to stray from the traditional shapes and design
cabinets with curved sides, flowing tops, as well as, mixing in panels
of stained glass in the place of wood panels. The latter combining his
wood working skills with his ability to design and work with stained
glass. His interest in creating “never seen before cabinets” has been
replaced with an incredible love for designing and building chairs and
stools. Peter still enjoys building custom desks, tables, beds, and
cabinets out of his small shop in Cornville, Maine but his passion is
creating “one of a kind” wood chairs that are not only beautiful to
look at but comfortable to sit on. Each piece of every chair is shaped
by hand from rough sawn hardwood boards by this award winning artist.
He finds that he connects strongly with each chair as the wood seat is
created. Starting with rough 8/4 boards, Peter selects the most
attractive board to build the seat. Believing the seat is the
centerpiece of each chair, the selected board has to have an
interesting grain pattern and a rich color. The boards for every seat
are matched, glued, and planed down to 7/4. It is at this point that
the flat seat blank is initially edge shaped and taken to his grinding
booth. This is where Peter grinds and sands each seat, shaping and
matching each side by eye and touch. As wood chips and dust fly, the
grain pattern changes as he works to the desired depth. It is at this
moment that time seems to stand still and Peter is totally connected to
the raw material he is working on. Shaped by hand and eye to a 220 grit
finish, the seat is then ready for assembly.
Peter
is an artist who gives a customer the opportunity to truly
individualize the chair
or stool that has been commissioned. The customer can enjoy choosing
from a large variety of wood species and select what wood the
functional art piece will be built out of. Wood can be mixed and
matched to suit each customer’s need and desire. To view a
selection of wood readily available for a commissioned chair or stool
please visit www.hearnehardwoods.com, or www.highlandhardwoods.com. to
make your choice. When selecting hardwood for an order it is
important to know that most of Peter’s hand-shaped seats start
from 8/4 rough sawn lumber. After visiting these sites you will realize
that there is quite a selection of hardwood species to choose from for
one of Peter’s seats. Due to the fact that some of the
components of each chair are worked up from 16/4 there is less to
choose from when it comes to the chair itself. Peter finds that a
majority of his chairs are worked up from Black Walnut, Cherry, or Hard
Maple with a different species for the seat of the chair.
When
building a chair for a customer, Peter makes a point of hand selecting
the best hardwood boards out of the bins at the lumber yards. This
guarantees that if he is building a set, all the chairs will relate to
one another. There may be times though when Peter has to purchase a
board (such as Koa) without inspecting it first. In this case, the wood
will still be of a high grade but grain pattern and color will not necessarily be
able to be matched. Also, prices of his chairs may vary depending on
the wood selected. Following is an example of this:
 |
WALTON NE SIDE CHAIR
black walnut
with black walnut seat
$1,750 |
 |
WALTON NE SIDE CHAIR
black walnut
with koa seat
$2,350 |
|
