Customer Reviews

The Custom Furniture Sourcebook: A Guide to 125 Craftsmen

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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(I looked over this book in the store, and hope to get it for Christmas)

Lots of great pictures! If you are a long time Fine Woodworking reader you will recognize many of them. However, you notice other nuances when they are placed with unseen pictures of the craftsman's other work.

The wide variety of styles is very useful for forming your own sense of design and proportion. You see traces of James Krenov's style on many pages. I found it more useful and inspiring than Taunton's Design Book series.

If you were looking to hire somone to make you a custom piece I suspect this book would be quite a help, but I'm looking at it as more of a survey of current work. I plan to use it to help refine where I want to go with my own furniture design and woodworking.

-Jeff

I'm a woodworker, so when I was at the local tool store, I started thumbing through this book. The book is a wonderful survey of current woodworking. I saw lots of stuff that I'd love to build. When I saw a certain floor lamp very much like one I have been mentally designing, I bought the book.

This book can best be described as fancy, "glossy catalog."

One very helpful item is a summary of the 'terms and conditions' of the various craftspersons--required deposit, lead times, whether there is a charge for design work, etc. Apparently, I might be able to ask for (and receive) more from my clients.

I love this book. It is filled with beautiful, unique pieces of furniture. There are a few extreme designs, but most of the pieces you could imagine having in your own home. All of the pictures are in color and a good size so you can see the details clearly. Besides giving the names and postal addresses of the craftsmen, the author also furnishes websites and email addresses for many of them. In the back there is a regional index and a style index which are both very useful. Even though this book is paperback, I think it would make a great coffee table book because every aspect of it is beautifully designed; the text, the photographs and the layout.

This is the perfect present to give someone who thinks that the art of making fine furniture is a dying one. In it are representative works by 125 of our finest craftsfolk. Here you will find artists who extends styles which have become timeless without ever being imitative (Robert Stevenson and Jeffrey Greene), woodworkers who are intent in opening new avenues of creativity (Tom Hobgood and Christoph Neander), and every variation in between. And each and every one is a master of the craft.

In a sense, this is a puff book - created to facilitate the contact between the artist and the knowledgeable consumer. Each furniture maker gets two beautifully printed pages to present their work and their ideas. Not very much room, when you think of it. Reading the book is like spending a day at the very best custom furniture show in the world. And like a good show, the submissions were juried by a panel to ensure that promotional or not, the contents were the genuine article.

I bought the book to look for some ideas for furniture - not to buy, but to build. If I look too long I get a bit depressed as I realize how much more skilled these makers are than I am. But it is an inspiration, and, eventually, it helped me make what I wanted to do a bit finer in concept. If you love to look at fine things, or are one of the fortunate who can look forward to having them, this book is a homage to artistry that is a combination of great imagination and the skill to execute it.

This book is a tread addition to my collection of "inspirational" materials. It has several high quality pictures highlighting each craftsman's portfolio. (125 craftsmen x 4-5 photos each = over 500 photos!) I have enjoyed the information contained on the pages of this book and will continue to refer back to them when I want to find a high quality craftsman or to get ideas for my own designs.