New Experiences, New Opinions

Kale Vogt
May 12, 2025

Three nights ago I rolled up to my apartment around midnight after having driven more than four hours from Hendersonville, Tennessee. I was utterly exhausted but the feeling of accomplishment I felt from the chair lying upside down in my passenger seat made the drive all worthwhile.

I spent last week at Greg Pennington’s workshop building the George Peddle chair with Jon Grant, a talented and knowledgeable chairmaker from Tasmania. I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship from The Chairmaker’s Toolbox to attend this class. On Friday afternoon, I left Greg’s feeling a high from the far-away creative world I had been immersed in.

I also left Greg’s with some things I didn’t expect: opinions. Opinions on tools and techniques – things that I never questioned before but suddenly was flooded with many thoughts about.

Before I dive into those thoughts, my newfound “opinions,” I want to bring up a topic that’s been on my mind for some time now. That is the spectrum between design and craft that furniture makers tend to live on.

Jon Grant demonstrating his rubber band technique for locating his stretcher mortises.

While this is something I think I’ve always noticed in other makers, it wasn’t until I fell into woodworking that it began to really interest me. It’s how I like to get to know a maker; the design/craft spectrum is like the furniture maker's equivalent to a personality test.

I think about my father whenever I ponder the spectrum and where I land on it. My dad is a craftsperson through and through. For the past several years, leatherworking has been his main hobby. He makes leather bags and hats and belts and and and – you name it, he’s made it.

It’s well known that I get much of my desire to work with my hands from him, but there is one glaring difference between my dad and me. Every single thing I have known him to make has been derived from another person’s design. His interest lies solely in the “making”; he couldn’t seem to care less about the design process.

And me? Well, I can’t seem to follow a design plan perfectly to spec to save my life. My dad leans heavy towards “craft,” while I seem to land somewhere between the two.

I live for the design process and how it occupies my brain. I love pondering new design ideas and putting my own personal touch on existing designs. Although this personality trait often causes me trouble (see my last post), I learn best this way. And if I play it safe and don’t follow through on my design ideas, it keeps me awake at night.

Gifts from new friends.

I noticed this again last week while recreating the George Peddle chair. Jon seems to lean closer to craft. I know this because he told me. While chatting one day about the chair, he mentioned that creating his own designs isn’t of much interest to him. He loves recreating others’ chair designs, just like how he’s been recreating and teaching the George Peddle chair for years.

I, on the other hand, had already decided going into the class how I wanted to slightly alter the seat and comb shape. It wasn’t dramatic by any means (basically, I didn’t want to round the edges) but it was important to me.

I’d like to say that I don’t believe there’s a “wrong” way to exist on the craft/design spectrum. I’m sharing all of this because I love hearing how other people identify themselves, and I’ve found the spectrum concept helpful in discovering my own identity as a woodworker.

This leads me back to my original point, my “opinions.” Just like there isn’t a “wrong” way to exist on the craft/design spectrum, I don’t believe there is a wrong way to perform a task in woodworking (unless you’re bleeding or likely to cause bleeding). If there’s anything I’ve learned during my last year as an apprentice, it’s that there are a thousand ways to execute a single task.

My (nearly finished) George Peddle chair. All that’s needed is a coat of oil and wax.

I’ve never questioned the way I drill my mortises or carve my seats. How I do things now is how I was taught and how I’m used to doing them. I’m aware of other techniques but was quite content with how I was taught.

Then again, all of this is easy to say when your techniques have never been challenged.

I quickly discovered I was in for a treat last week when I found myself in a foreign woodshop performing alternative chairmaking techniques.

“Wouldn’t it be faster if we…” I thought to myself. “But why that? Wouldn’t it make more sense if….”

For the first time in my woodworking career, I had opinions.

Now that time has passed, what these opinions were isn’t important to me. What feels important is that I tried these new techniques, regardless of my opinions.

While I missed the comfort of the Lost Art Press workshop during my time away, I learned to open myself up to challenging all that I’ve known. And that’s something I hope to carry with me throughout my woodworking journey.