Cherry Orbit

North and South

Why have we gone north?  Seasons.  Nature. History. Solitude. Canadians. Critters. New beginning.  Yoga on the rocks, glow green tree frogs, blueberries by the handful, kayaking in clear water at dawn, sunrises…all of the heightened senses that go along with being present.

We did not anticipate to duplicate this experience, but voila!  A week spent on the Osa Pennisula of Costa Rica was a southern tropical window to the above.  Here, it was the silent rhythms of the northern story in the heat of the tropics with monkeys, macaws, pelicans and the people who have gravitated to this paradise.

Both places put us in that spellbound place of being present.  We are thankful.

Blue Osa Costa Rica

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January 28th, 2012 Filed Under Uncategorized | No Comments »

Where were we?

Where we are now is still on a horse farm in Lancaster Pennsylvania.  We are  on the move to Canada but it is an evolution.  Last summer we built  a woodshop/yoga studio on our Canada property for the two fold reason of being able to make everything for our house and a sanctuary for our other side of the coin which is a building that allows us to express ourselves artistically and spiritually. The transition from one life to another is still daunting but more tangible as  time has moved us further along the path.  Once we sell our business down here, we will have no choice but to dive into our new world. We will pack a truck with everything we own (remember the purging blog) and go.

Let’s go.

Woodshop / Yoga studio

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January 23rd, 2012 Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Risks Of Re-Invention

Stepping out of our comfort zone means growth and change but practically speaking, it is uncomfortable and scary and leaving behind everything that has been successful for us since we can remember, is heavy here .

Everything about how we have done business in the past, will not be applicable to where we are going.  We face a local business climate in Canada, with considerable less resources to spend on our projects and a much simpler approach to design than we are used to.  This is more a decision of rural geography  on our part, and that is where the risk is taken.  We believe that our design aesthetic will transfer  successfully but who knows?

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April 18th, 2011 Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Logistics

We have just finished creating the millwork for two 18th century rooms, to be installed in a very modern Brooklyn waterfront condo.  The distance between the shop in Lancaster and Brooklyn, means that everything has to be made to fit and measurements can’t be checked everyday.

This is nerve-wracking.  It has to be right the first time and the logistics in transport and installation are daunting for a small country woodshop.

This is an interesting world…a traveling client, with his own specific taste.  Pair that with an exacting architect and you have PRESSURE!

That is why this is our last project like this .  We are getting too old for this shit.

In Canada, we look forward to small projects, nearby , and hope that our only distraction is the local moose.

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March 29th, 2011 Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Less Is More/After The Purging

For many years, we lived in a big house with big furniture that came from having big ideas about big dinner parties.  At the shop we did big furniture projects for clients with big pockets and big visions.

We have learned in this economic downturn that we need less and that less has proven more in rethinking values material and personal.

We are now furniture makers without furniture.  As we approach building pieces for our new Canadian house, we are thinking about subtlety, clean natural lines and playful quirks of geometry.  We hope that people that come to our new house will see something new and unexpected…same people, new vision.  We anticipate a limited choice of woods and cliental where we are moving, but look forward to the challenge of designing within these constraints.

BIG CHAIR

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March 27th, 2011 Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Personal Hiatus

Dining Room

We barely had enough time to eat and drink during the festive Christmas holidays due to a sudden interest in the selling of our house.  It did indeed sell and we had three weeks to vacate our lives of 15 years.  Making this all possible was the generous offer of a good friend to live in a beautiful farmhouse on their property.This is where we live now, amid the wind, the vistas , grazing horses and fox.

Now that the dust has settled, we are starting to experience the sadness of giving up a house that was ours creatively from beginning to end.  It was our personal masterpiece, which we were fortunate to live in for a long time.  Although our new space is magical, we are looking forward to embracing a blank canvas up north to begin the creative process again.

Although we left reluctantly it was time to go, time for reinvention and very apparent that an opportunity was presenting itself to do just that. We grabbed it.

Business as usual at our old location, at least for a couple of years, while we finish our house project in Canada.

It will take time and thoughtful consideration to imagine our new space, it being so different from the old in terms of size, proportion, light and relationship to nature.  That relationship will be the most exciting thing and one that we have not had in our lives for quite a while.  The farm is providing us with a good transition.

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March 13th, 2011 Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Taking Off!

Something weird is happening.  The economy has tanked, real estate is plummeting, republicans are everywhere and unemployment hasn’t budged and yet…our business is booming.  That is both businesses, woodworking and yoga.

About 20%of our business lately are new customers.

Granted, this is a small segment of the economic engine of the U.S. but we can’t be the only ones that are benefiting from this kind of growth.

Kim’s yoga business which started 6 months ago primarily as one on one private yoga lessons has grown from 1-7plus a week.

So…two diverse small businesses have started to bloom at the same time.

This bodes well.

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November 6th, 2010 Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

What We Are Up Against

With the advent of computer-controlled woodworking technology, repeatable accuracy has become available.  With the aid of good design, woodworking products can be manufactured well and cheaply and outsourced to countries such as China, presenting the woodworker with a new type of competition.

What the custom woodworker offers is exactly that – customized to your needs in style, finish and function.  For example, a modern entertainment center, styled as a French armoire, finished to look 200 years old…means you need to find a custom woodworker.

Custom is more expensive than buying something off of the shelf, but still offers good value in that the customer gets exactly what they want.

What we offer in design and finish is unique in that there is a conversation literally and figuratively between the customer and the maker.  This personalization or conversation gets lost when these technologies become the one of a kind blueprint for creativity.

Creativity is what we offer as custom craftsmen

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October 6th, 2010 Filed Under Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

The Beaver Dam

We were not the only builders in town.  While on vacation from the house project, we kayaked a small lake that was in the middle of nowhere.  The lake was created by a man-made dam at one end with a fairly large body of water behind it that was protected and perfect for kayaking.  As we headed upstream , at the far end of the lake we came upon several small beaver dams in disarray.  We immediately thought “these animals are going nowhere”  We paddled a little further

Beaver Dam

where we came upon the Hoover dam of beaver dams rising to a height of  5 feet and a width of several hundred feet.  No wonder beavers had abandoned their lowly hovels for this Four Seasons resort.  This dam was huge enough to create a 2 acre pond behind it.

It was truly an engineering feat.  How such a massive enterprise was created and co-ordinated with such complexity and asthetic, had us rethink the whole beaver world.  A beaver was not just a large rodent, but a large rodent with a large brain and a sense of community.  The beaver dam was as successful an enterprise as the man-made dam at the far end of the lake, requiring similar ingenuity and far less money and equipment.  It was apparent that this beaver dam had been around for many years and was maintained daily with fresh mud and new wood.

It left us wondering just how much more advanced we are than beavers and of course the question, “Where were they?”

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September 25th, 2010 Filed Under Uncategorized | 100 Comments »

What It Was – Redux

A working livingroom

We were crestfallen when we pulled up to our new house and found that nothing had happened that was supposed to happen.  These projects included installation of a sink, a toilet, a smooth finished road through the woods and the completion of the exterior house siding…and water.  So, being snarky Americans, we got right on our cell phones to read our Canadian subs the riot act.  Within 2 days the place was crawling with workers, tripping over each other completing the jobs that should have been done months ago.

Lo and behold, a week later, promises had been kept and it was time for us to start in on our end of the project.

Experiencing the “overwhelmed” that any new house builder has, we divied up tasks of insulation, painting steel, installing boardwalk, all in the context of vacation, putting time aside  for swimming off the rocks, picnicing, kyaking, biking and bugger bridge.

First task was insulating walls and ceiling which proved to be much easier to accomplish by hiring the contractor to do the overhead work.  We then found out, the insulation was the easy part…the taping of the vapor barrier to seal in the insulation was an additional weeks work.  Vacation leaned heavily toward work.

The weather turned simply beautiful so we could not ignore it.  It was time to frolic and remember what this place was all about.  We found time to play and visit friends, so pretty soon, we were behind in our work again. Fortunately the weather in everchanging  fashion reminded us of the tasks at hand.  Boardwalks were built, beams painted, mountains of trash were burned and wildflowers were planted.  Blisters accumulated and camp hair was prevalent.  The last few days were devoted to interior design work when our minds were feeble and our bodies, dog-tired. We left with many measurements, memories and a year to segue to the next phase.

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September 17th, 2010 Filed Under Uncategorized | 28 Comments »