A Cabinetmakers Notebook

• ISBN: 978-0-941936-59-0
• 132 pages
• Paperback

Those who know and love wood are never in a hurry with it, preferring to engage themselves in the rich and slow magic that wood works on the human psyche. This is no ordinary woodworking book, and James Krenov is no ordinary cabinetmaker. A glance at his work - illustrated here with over 150 beautiful color and black-and-white photographs - will show why his artisanship stands among the finest in the world today.

Although James Krenov's work is in museum collections on both sides of the Atlantic and in Japan, and although he is a successful and inspiring teacher, his is a deeper, low-tone experience that is rare in our hectic world. A Cabinetmaker's Notebook contains reflections on his life and work as a cabinetmaker - not just the how, but the why of a way of living and working with wood. Craftsman in every medium will be inspired by this account of familiar and even recurring problems - getting started, finding one's true self in the work, developing habits that increase the joys and lessen the difficulties of a complex craft, and the crucial task of resisting the pressure to do less than one's best. Cabinetmakers, amateur or otherwise, will be fascinated by the discussion of the woods. Krenov uses (air-dried and flitch-cut) and his tools (he makes his own), as well as in the individual pieces shown.