Sippican Cottage
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Many Thanks

October 31, 2011 5 Comments

I’m grateful for a lot of things.

There is no way for me to tell who does it, but people do use the Amazon search box you’ll find in the right sidebar, and also the various Amazon links I append to entries about this and that. I get a little commission and a stream of income from it, and it doesn’t add anything to the price of things purchased.

Of course, I sell the furniture I make over there in the sidebar too, and many of my readers are my best customers. I still make all of it myself, out of raw materials and elbow grease, and am gratified each and every time I sell something. It’s especially nice to get emails from hither and yon with some feedback.

  • The new tables are so incredibly beautiful that my whole house now looks tacky. There should be warnings on your website that these consequences might occur! (Diane)
  • Many thanks for a beautiful table!  We will continue to watch your site! (Barry and JJ)
  • The tables you made for us are terrific and work perfectly in our
    bedroom, we love them!  Thanks so much for making them for us and
    shipping them to the Vineyard. Beautiful! We love the tiger maple tops
    with the off white legs. (Judy)
  • I was totally delighted with
    my purchase from Sippican Cottage Furniture. The proprietor corresponded
    with me personally to let me know when my item shipped. The item was
    packaged tightly and securely and arrived in time for the event for
    which it was purchased, and the product was even more beautiful than
    pictured on the web site. Definitely a positive experience! (Phoebe)

Lots of people compliment me on the packaging. I think they’re used to having things delivered broken. It’s more expensive to ship a fully assembled table than flat-pack stuff, of course, but isn’t your time worth something? Most people are too busy to put together their own furniture, and nothing put together with a little wrench is likely to last very long. Packaging for mass-produced goods gets whittled down to its barest essence, and often doesn’t last the trip. The disappointment of a busted anything coming out of a shipping box exceeds just the money involved. We avoid it like the plague by packaging smart and sturdy. My wife and I do it together. It’s as close to a date as we get these days, I guess. 

I especially like it when people send me pictures of the stuff in use, and most especially love the pictures of the youngins using their furniture. Look at Andy’s beautiful children, using their Super Ten Finger Stepper to hang their Halloween decorations.

Andy wrote to me along with the picture, prompted by my waxing poetic about getting a muffin and a cup of coffee like I was sitting in the electric chair and the governor called:

What we give to others is precious, indeed. In pursuit of that
sentiment, I thought I would update you on the development of your
stepper under the care of my children.  It is coming along swimmingly,
and shows much promise toward a long existence of cheerful utility.  The
darn thing can’t help itself from wanting to help everyone else. 

It’s the children that remind you what you’re trying to do. “It is a meager thing, but mine own.”

So thanks, everybody, for reading and commenting and buying my book
,and purchasing my furniture and pressing on my links and being my Interfriends.

The World Is Full Of Two-Legged Stools And We Wander In Search Of The Third

August 5, 2011 1 Comment

Kagen Schaefer is a Denver woodworker. He’s a mathematician, but he’s not that into it. He likes to make things out of wood. The mathematician part shows through anyway.

His creations are not a joke. I’ve seen many people that design and build furniture that looks like a bad joke, poorly told. Deliberately crooked. One Chippendale claw foot reaching out to grab its ball, rolled away. Upside down. Anally-retentive finish on fussy materials and an antiseptic design with a big, bent rusty nail pounded into it for a knob. Chairs you can’t sit in. That sort of thing.

Furniture is like architecture and a very few other disciplines in that it cannot be solely an intellectual exercise. Architects amuse themselves at the expense of the occupants more often than not, now. The other end of the spectrum is people who make things bereft of any sign of style, proportion, or artistry. There is a circular continuum of this approach, and you crash into one another at the perigee of the approach from polar opposite styles: IKEA asceticism isn’t any better than woodworkers lovingly crafting klunky end tables out of ropy oak boards in their basement. The same thing is missing from both.

Look at Kagen’s workshop. Compare it with Wednesday’s example. I did not want to comment on items not in evidence, your honor, but when I saw all those tools jammed into the previous workshop, the first thing that came into my mind was: I bet he makes homely furniture, and not much of it. I apologize if I’m wrong, which is easy for me because I know I’m not.

“Commodity, firmness, and delight” is the three-legged stool of furniture design, and architectural design, too, of course, where the rule of thumb comes from. I strive for it every day, in my own meager way.  Is it sturdy; comfortable and useful; is it beautiful? We cannot fault Kagen, for lingering so long on the delightful part, can we? He didn’t skimp on the other two, after all.

Good Housekeeping

June 2, 2011 8 Comments

It’s come to my attention that things need tidying up around this here Cottage. Loose ends, frayed nerves I always say.

Actually, I never say that, except that one time in the first paragraph. Pithy, isn’t it. I’m a pither.

If you’re new around here, I make things. Furniture. I had a little sale yesterday. I sold five tables before noon. They’re already on the FedEx truck on the way to their new owners. Thanks to everyone who bought one. Everyone that’s ever bought one, now that I think of it.

I made them from trees from right down the street. I don’t know why, but I get a little grin out of that. Every tree has end tables in it. You just have to let them out.

I don’t have all that many tables to sell most days. I make the items for the Ready to Ship page while I’m making other furniture from Made to Order orders. I think the work I’m currently doing is turning out better than ever. I’ve made many dozens of these end tables, but none better:

They went to Martha’s Vineyard. Pleasant customer. I made a console table for Phil the other day, too, and it turned out well. I was proud to put it in the box.

Speaking of the box, I get a lot of praise for the boxes the tables come in. I get a tickle from that, too, because I rather enjoy packaging the items. I’m not sure what people are expecting, but they seem pleasantly surprised when the items show up in one piece. My wife and I do the packaging together, and it’s fun. My wife is my best friend, too. I work all alone the rest of the time.

Sippican Cottage Furniture is a national brand. I think that’s a hoot, too. When I send out an email notification of a sale, the email service shows me a map of where my emails get opened. I love utilities like that.

I’ve sold furniture to seven or eight states more than pictured on the map, but if  North and South Dakota have any inhabitants, you can’t tell by me. The email service I use is MailChimp. They are terrific, and lots of fun. My little son hangs around my desk when I have the service open because they have a chimp mascot that leaves amusing messages for you while you work. Everything about the service is charming, but still professional. That’s hard to do. If you’re not on our email list, but would like to be, you can sign up at the top of any page at Sippican Cottage Furniture.

I’m grateful to everyone that reads here, and those that comment, and those that link. There is no way for me to tell who’s doing it, but very nice persons are actually using my Amazon search box, and I’d like to thank you,  whoever you are, for it.

I’ll have a book for you to buy soon. Hope you will.

How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall? Make Pianos

February 9, 2011 6 Comments

The heir was pawing through the Neflix streaming catalog, which consists mostly of movies that no one wants to see. Going where others do not often go can sometimes yield gems, found among the tailings — while everybody else ranges all over the Big Rock Candy Mountain of entertainment and gets a bellyful, and a bellyache. And a headache, if it’s in 3D. He found Note By Note, a little movie about the Steinway factory in Queens. It’s terrific.



The movie is aimed at the urban intellectual. It is not a craft show, though lots of craft is shown. There’s a hint of noble savage-worship from the filmmakers as they observe the people that make the things. I’m sure a lot of intellectual dots are connected wondering why every factory can’t be like that. Maybe we can pass a law.

The dirty secret is that there can be only one factory like that. All the rest must be run out of business so that Steinway can charge a hundred large and get it. It reminds me of 95-year-old Yankees wondering why everyone doesn’t eat only rhubarb, pork fat, and canned wax beans, take cold salt water baths and live in an unheated house — which they paint every five years with good old lead paint, and wash the brushes out with gasoline. It killed everyone else that tried it, but the last person to tell the tale always says it made them what they were.

This observation shouldn’t diminish the value of the work done in the factory, or the work that must be done to get the dough to buy one of the things, either. I get my economics right from the tap, so the word “factory” holds no terrors and few secrets. I like it in the original iteration: manufactory. It’s the manu that matters. Always will. I have a teeny tiny embryonic version of what I watched on the screen. I’m still alive in an industry that’s mostly dead, which is no small feat,  but I know to end up a Steinway in any business is very, very, unlikely. Someone’s going to outlast me and get the only ring, as I’ve outlasted many others.

Steinway isn’t kidding when it says it pretty much does everything the same way it always has. Check out this video from 1929, when some of my immigrant relatives were working in a piano factory in Boston, waiting for Steinway to put them out of business.



I’ve been a professional musician, likewise in a very small way, so Note By Note (note: website autoplays noise and music) doesn’t leave me in the dust when the talent shows up. Like the Steinway factory guys, I don’t presume to be just like them, but I know enough about the business to know what’s going on with them. And let me tell you, the jerk that plays the Charles Ives cacophony at the end after torturing the Steinway people through the whole thing is being snickered at, deservedly, behind his back at the factory.What a fraud.

The tears in the eyes of the mother and father and grandparents when a teenager gets his Steinway and plays it beautifully for them in their living room is very, very real though, and worth the price of admission.

Tag: shameless commerce

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sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

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