​Currently in the design prototype fabrication stage is a finished metal base by Brian Gilman. Its like planting unknown flower seeds. I don't know what he will come up with but I know it'll be good. Stay tuned.

The old nylon bases have evolved. We now offer two new choices, soon to be three.

​Our Lizzie Bed (right) owes its heritage to George Nelson also. At this point I see yet another design on the horizon based on thjis theme.

It was 1954 when George Nelson created his Thin Edge group of designs for Herman Miller Furniture Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dirk DePree, the Chairman of Herman Miller, had selected Nelson to be the company's Director of Design despite Nelson having no experience designing furniture.  DePree was more interested in Nelson’s insight into the best way to make furniture innovative and useful. Nelson was offered a contract that allowed him the freedom to work outside of Herman Miller, and to use designs from other architects that Nelson had worked with. His Thin Edge Group is still sold today by Herman Miller. It is also being made by nummerous offshore manufacturers and sold through Design Within Reach and Hive and takeoffs of this design may be found at West Elm and HedgeHouse. I have observed a few things regarding these takeoffs and the mass manufactured versions. The price seems nice, but once all the boxes arrive on your doorstep and you are assembling the bed the construction might seem minimalist. In other words lots of fasteners between the pieces allow for loosening and movement.  They are a good value given what you pay, but bed joints not immutably fastened only become more and more loose. And with the weight of a few people the stress on the joints multiplies.

But back to the designer. In his time George Nelson seemed not only unconventional and tastefully noncommercial, but at times negative. "...the career of an architect who advocated the end of architecture, a furniture designer who imagined rooms without furniture, an urban designer who contemplated the hidden city, an industrial designer who questioned the future of the object and hated the obsession with products."

Wood has some odd behavior. Once a tree is cut down it is not alive, and neither does it need to breathe, yet it does have seasonal shrinkage in certain directions but not others. No shrinkage in the "0" direction (see the top right photo). Maybe a little, .01%, if you want to be exact, but not enough to matter in use. Across the grain in the "1" direction it shrinks almost 10%! And what really makes it difficult is wood shrinks only 4% in the radial "2" direction. These percentages apply to thoroughly dried wood to 6% moisture content. These are just the seasonal movement percentages for dry wood! 

Thats why it warps, splits and changes shape as it dries requiring special techniques to build with (as shown in the middle right diagram). That is where plywood has changed the world. The wood plies alternate in direction, and as long as the plies are 1/8" or less in thickness they lock each other down into a stable non-moving sheet of plywood. The diagram at the lower right is courtesy of​www.lozidesigns.com, specialists in making cool plywood designs.

Why use solid wood if its so tricky to use and costs more as a material? Some of that increased cost is not knowing what you are getting into until you cut it open!

​See my next blog post for differences in building furniture with solid wood versus plywood.