Furniture makers bring craftsmanship to toys

One of the winter's most appealing art shows began with a very simple impulse: Woodworkers hate to waste great material.

That's how the Mendocino Coast Furniture Makers came to put on a exhibit of toys made almost entirely from wood. The show runs until mid-January at the Mendocino Arts Center.

“You often have a lot of pieces of wood that are really gorgeous, but they're really not big enough to make a big project out of,” said furniture maker Kerry Marshall.

“We squirrel those pieces away over the years. We can't part with them,” he added. “We all have these extra pieces of wood and some of them are quite exotic, from ebony to rosewood, mahogany, maple and various oaks.”

Venturing away from furniture toward smaller-scale pieces, the artisans started making toys.

“Exploring the idea of toys from the furniture maker's perspective was fascinating,” Marhsall said. “It was something some of us had done maybe once or twice, for a friend or a grandchild.”

The show includes work by all but two of 13 craftsmen in the Mendocino Coast Furniture Makers, all former students of the legendary author, teacher and furniture maker James Krenov.

Krenov was the founder of the nationally known woodworking and furniture-making program at College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg, which he taught from 1981 until his retirement in 2002. Krenov died in September at age 88.

“We all got trained in that Krenovian discipline,” Marshall said. “It's a marriage between technique and aesthetic. It's about looking at the wood and understanding the wood has a voice. Most of us let the wood do the speaking.”

Despite their common background, the furniture makers produced a wide variety of toys for the new show, including Marshall's miniature house-shaped blocks, Paul Reiber's hand-carved animal figures, Stefan Furrer's push-toys and a child's workbench crafted by Robert Sanderson.

“The diversity of our furniture making is echoed in our toys,” Marshall said. “Each of us has our own style.”

Marshall imagines the workbench would have delighted Krenov the master artisan at about age 10.

The toys in the show are for sale. Prices start at $40 and run as high as furniture prices for some pieces.

Not only is the exhibit itself a collaboration, but it has drawn the support of the whole Mendocino Coast arts community.

Originally scheduled to open Dec. 1, the show was delayed by a fire that damaged the offices at the Mendocino Arts Center in late November.

Last week, several Mendocino art galleries volunteered to display the toys until the center could reopen Thursday.

The official opening reception held Saturday for this show and two other exhibits also served as a party in honor of the Mendocino Arts Center's reopening.

“It really became a community celebration,” Marshall said.

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. See his ARTS blog at http://arts.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.