This visit we happened upon one of the caretakers. A kindly man from Queens who unobtrusively straightened chairs, swept and happily volunteered to take our photo and tell us about the park and the people who care for it. He’s been there 18 years. One of his coworkers has been on duty for over thirty years. Although it probably sounds a little corny, they conjure images of Siddartha ferrying travelers across the river, for we feel transported from the din of the city upon entering. The caretaker’s matter-of-fact friendliness lends additional significance to this very special place. If I lived in New York I would make frequent pilgrimages to this special place.

Cherry, walnut and maple, and their subspecies of flame, Claro, curly, birdseye and others provide a wide range of woods from which to choose. In addition, they can be flatsawn, riftsawn, and quartersawn to expose very different grain, pattern and color. These, and others are responsibly harvested from sustainable forests in the United States. The foresters know they have a precious commodity that would be foolish to squander.

Andy and Joe at Centennial Hardwoods in Denver have been especially patient with me over the years. They’ll set out a thousand board feet of lumber and let me sift through the entire pile (as long as I restack it) in search of the best two hundred feet for my project. Being a very small operator I can’t afford to accept anything less than the very best wood. I also work with small mills in Pennsylvania, California, Oregon and Michigan. Skip and Norman at Goodhope Hardwoods in Landenburg, PA send prime Cherry, Walnut and Maple. Jim Baker of Baker Hardwoods in Gilroy, CA sends me full width slabs of Cherry and Walnut. And Sara at Northwest Timber in Oregon has supplied me with wonderful milled Claro Walnut. Thanks to the Internet I can view the lumber before I buy.

So now, at the risk of being branded a hypocrite, I do occasionally incorporate very small amounts of ebony into my work – primarily for butterfly tenons on free edge pieces. Meanwhile, I try to walk the talk as best I can…

My response was that all my clients are very particular. They may not know exactly what they want, but they expect the highest quality finished product. And it may take them a while, and a lot of back and forth, to determine exactly what they’re after.

That’s fine with me. I’m also very particular, and it often takes me a while to discover exactly what I’m after and how to get there. I build everything to order. Materials are expensive and the process is time consuming. It pays to be particular about every step along the way. I can’t afford to produce anything less.

I just finished a custom dining table. The top is an ellipse with tapered edge. The base is a variation of the base on my Parallax Coffee Table. The top required only two drawings to obtain the edge profile the client was after. The base began very differently and necessitated a back and forth between the designer, client and myself that included four sets of drawings and several emails until we got the form and overhang to the client’s satisfaction. That’s all in a day’s (or several days) work. It’s what I do.

For me, it’s a question of balance – trying to keep things in perspective. I’ve pursued my dreams and strive to quietly examine my life so as to live fully. I find it a difficult task juggling family, business and taking care of myself. Obviously, family and business come first, but I’ve found that if I’m not taking care of myself the other two suffer.

I’m blessed with a healthy body that allows me to actively pursue my two athletic passions: cycling and telemark skiing. I recently rebuilt my 1972 Atala bicycle, which I ride twice a week. I feel as if I’ve gone organic after owning three Eddy Merckx’s and a Waterford. My rides allow me to clear my head as I get the endorphins flowing. It’s cathartic. Margaret finds a similar experience on her bike. By the way, if you’re ever in the market for a new bicycle built to your specifications check out www.waterfordbikes.com. They build high quality bikes in Wisconsin under the leadership of Richard Schwinn. Yes, that Schwinn.

Skiing is an uplifting (no pun intended) experience for me. To be in the mountains in winter at the ski area, backcountry or hut system reminds me of what brought me to Colorado so many years ago. The scenery, solitude and challenge of pushing myself renew me.

Lastly, I strive to live in the moment. It’s a gentle struggle to remind myself to slow down, take it all in nonjudgmentally, and just be. Balance…

I’m occasionally asked to interpret a piece of furniture from a manufacturer. I won’t copy, as I don’t appreciate others copying my work, but most manufacturers won’t do custom variations. So a client will ask me to do a different shape, size or other permutation. They will send a picture or ask me to view the piece in question. Generally these are high quality pieces, so the first thing I notice is their apparent perfection: totally uniform grain pattern, color and form. Evenly stained verneer (I only use solid wood) lacquered to a perfectly smooth finish (mine are handrubbed).

I have to remind myself that if that’s what they wanted they wouldn’t have come to me. My work isn’t perfect. I spend a great deal of time selecting and orienting boards for the optimal match of grain and color, but wood is an organic material that does vary. It has a personality I refuse to mask with stain and lacquer. The slight undulations in a table top I have handplaned and scraped reflect the nature of the craft – to the best of my ability…

You can view my attempts at perfection on my website: www.dekovenfurniture.com

I finally got to design a workspace from scratch, and decided to keep it simple. It’s a 1500 square foot passive solar rectangle with six sets of French doors facing due south. A 75 year old “new age” friend of my sister-in-law dedicated it with a ceremony I didn’t fully understand but embraced as a positive blessing for this place where I work and create. It’s about 40 feet from my home – far enough to get away and concentrate, and close enough to easily interact with my family.

I think I’ve succeeded at the first two pieces of Moser’s advice, but haven’t yet accomplished the third. My website, which was preceeded by three print catalogs, has several pieces which have come to be known as “DeKovens”.  Some very helpful friends along the way have been instrumental in putting together the catalogs and website, and my representatives at The Denver Design District, Carter Inc., provide a venue for showing and promoting my work. I piece the remaining tasks together as best I can.

Perhaps the best thing about all this is that four of the five studio/workshops I’ve had over the years have been adjacent to my home. I’ve been there as my two sons, now 18 and 21, have grown up, and I’ve been able to adjust my work schedule accordingly. During their early years I often fell asleep while reading them to sleep, awakened and went back out to work. I was able to see them off to school and be there when they got home after school, and rarely missed any of their extracurricular activities. I feel very lucky to have pulled that off.

If you happen to check out my website you’ll notice that I use the word “we” in referring to my business. This is somewhat of a misnomer, as I am a one man operation. The “we” refers to the essential people who help with the aforementioned correlate activities: My old friend Warren Johnson (we played little league together) who designed my catalogs; Deb Kunert at Carter Inc., my representatives at The Denver Design District; my webmaster, Brian Marshall at Propaganda Inc.; my accountant, Gerry Stewart; several mills and hardwood lumberyards who put up with my painstaking searches for the highest quality lumber; and most importantly, my wife Margaret, who remains my most brutally honest critic and biggest supporter. Her design sense and critical eye inspire much of my work.

A nine month long trip to South America to experience that part of the world and climb high mountains had a profound effect. Most of my travels were among the very poor – people struggling for survival on a daily basis. I was continually impressed by how little one really needs to survive, and returned to the U.S. with a heightened need to do something worthwhile – to contribute to society. So I returned to school, earned a teaching certificate at the University of Idaho and decided to teach in an underserved area.

I spent two years teaching in an elementary school on the Navajo Reservation. The community of Redrock consists of a trading post, chapter house and scattered residences ranging from tarpaper shacks to trailers, Hogans, and tribal tract houses. It’s located on the Arizona/New Mexico border thirty miles from Shiprock and sixty miles from Farmington. At almost 6000 feet in elevation it sits at the base of the Lukachuki Mountains. It’s a truly beautiful location, much of which was captured photographically during the 1930′s by Laura Gilpin in her book, “The Enduring Navaho”. There’s a photo of my Navajo teaching colleague, Jess King’s grandmother as a young girl holding a lamb. I loved living among the Navajo. It’s a very foreign culture eptiomized by a peaceful stocism that marches to a much different drummer than our society. While there I built a small house behind the trading post (financed by the trader) which he used to house employees after I left.

As I couldn’t convince my then girlfriend, now wife to leave her good job and family in Denver and move into a mobile home thirty miles from the nearest town (and Shiprock wasn’t much of a town) I returned to Colorado where I taught for five more years in an alternative high school in Commerce City amidst the oil refineries. The student body consisted of kids who didn’t fit into the traditional high school. Many were young girls with children of their own and kids who had gotten into trouble and had figured out that it was time to get on with life – that working fast food was a path to nowhere. The graduation rate at the local high school is under 50%. We provided a means to move forward with either a GED certificate or credits in enough classes to graduate. Our wonderful guidance councellor, Judy Sanderson, did an excellent job of placing graduates in vocational and technical training programs, and some went on to traditional colleges.

About this time my woodworking business took off. I tried teaching and building furniture, but I’d started a family and found that there weren’t enough hours in the day to do all justice. So with some trepidation I went into furniture building full time – and am still at it.

I just lost my train of thought as my 18 year old blasted the guitar riff from Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”… Warren is on our minds a lot, as he is a unique personality (don’t we all think our kids are unique) in that he has little concern for what the world thinks of him. He has his own sense of style, pursues his art (illustration and graphic design) from an uncluttered and unbiased point of view, and lives in the moment – which drives his parents crazy as we have no idea where the future will take him. We continually struggle to let him be as he follows his path, and to appreciate the unique individual, so different than us, that he is as we gently guide him toward the rest of his life. Siddhartha had to learn that with his son.

Uncluttered and unbiased. Living in the moment. He’s telling us something without knowing he’s doing so. The elegant simplicity that lies in an appreciation of now.