KW · § IX·b The Daybook · from the bench ← The Journal

§ IX·b — The Daybook

A line
a day.

The workshop's daily ledger — a short note left at the bench most days the shop is open. The long essays are gathered four times a year in the printed Journal; this is the everyday record between them. Kept Tuesday to Friday, in the maker's own hand.

↳ From the bench MMXXVI

Thu 2 July MMXXVI

From the bench

July in the shop begins the same way every year — with a moisture meter and a certain humility.

Every board on the racks got read this morning, and the drawer gaps for the summer builds were set to their winter numbers, not today's. Timber fitted snug in a New York July will bind by January; the craft is building for the month the room will be worst, not the month the invoice is sent. On measuring what the eye can't see →

Wed 1 July MMXXVI

Drawing

Three sets of drawings went to co-op boards this week, racing the summer work rules.

Most of the better prewar buildings close to alterations from late July through Labor Day, so June and early July are drawing season on the Upper East Side. Get the elevations, the COI and the elevator booking approved now, and the install lands the first week the building reopens. Working inside the co-op calendar →

Tue 30 June MMXXVI

The register

№ 1147 went onto the truck in Dallas at dawn — the first project milled and installed entirely by the Texas shop.

A his-and-hers pair in rift oak for a Preston Hollow house, drawn in New York the way everything is, but cut, finished and carried in by the Dallas bench alone. The plate reads the same as it does in Mott Haven; the standard doesn't change with the zip code. The Dallas workshop →

Wed 10 June MMXXVI

Material

Quarter-sawn white oak for № 1043 cut this morning, and the medullary ray fleck ran true across every face.

The log came from a Hudson Valley mill that still saws on commission — a hundred-and-eight years of growth, tight rings, no spring-wood blow in the face veneer. We set the two clearest boards aside for the upper cabinet doors of the Scarsdale study and will resaw the rest for drawer sides; nothing from a log this age goes to carcass stock we could cut from the yard. The full timber palette is kept in the materials reference →.

Tue 9 June MMXXVI

From the bench

The hardware for № 1037 came back from the platers, and we sent it back.

Two boxes of solid-bronze pulls, lacquered to a flat museum gold — exactly as specified, and exactly wrong for a dressing room meant to age. We've asked for them unlacquered instead, the way we argued for it in the spring field note on a living finish. A week's delay to gain twenty years of patina is not a delay.

Fri 5 June MMXXVI

Survey

Two hours on a parquet floor that had not been level since 1924.

A pre-war on Riverside — ten-foot ceilings, not one wall meeting another at a true ninety degrees. The scanner found a 31-millimetre fall across the back wardrobe wall, invisible to the eye and fatal to a catalogue system. We'll draw the scribe in before a board is cut. How we survey →

Thu 4 June MMXXVI

Delivery

Four hides of saddle leather arrived from Tärnsjö, still smelling of the tannery.

Vegetable-tanned, drum-dyed a deep oxblood not far from our own terra. They'll line the valet drawers and the jewellery trays for the Bedford project. We cut samples from the worst quarter of every hide and keep the rest for the work that shows.

Wed 3 June MMXXVI

The register

№ 1041 left the shop on a blanket-wrapped pallet at half past six.

A nine-foot walk-in in fumed oak, hand-dovetailed, three weeks on the bench. Installation is Thursday in Brooklyn Heights. The brass plate went on last, inside the left return where only the owner will ever find it — the same gesture as the first one.

Tue 2 June MMXXVI

Finish

We rejected the eighth coat of lacquer — which is to say we approved the seventh.

A study wall in rift oak under a hand-rubbed clay. The seventh coat had the depth of stone and the warmth of skin; the eighth would only have made it look like an expensive plastic. Knowing when to stop is most of the finish.

Fri 29 May MMXXVI

Drawing

A client asked for "just a few shelves," and left with eleven sheets of drawings.

It is almost never a few shelves. A reach-in done properly is a small piece of architecture — every inch of the nine feet of height earning its keep, the drawers set at the height of a hand rather than the height of a habit. We draw it all, at full scale, before we promise anything. What it costs, plainly →

The Daybook keeps the shop's days — Tuesday to Friday. The longer pieces are gathered four times a year in the printed Journal.

Take the next number in the register.

The daybook is where the work is noted; the register is where it is kept, in perpetuity. Begin with a conversation, no charge.

Schedule a visit The register

A line a day.