Gary Rogowski - Handmade: Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction

A rich lifes worth of journeys both at the workbench and upon the trail, Handmade can show us the way out of the woods, sure, but even better, it teaches us that maybe in the woods is the place to be. Gary Rogowski leads us gently but surely upon the path to a type of success we may not have previously considered. (Hint: it involves blisters). The stories and lessons in this palatable tome portray the type of ignorance to which we should all aspire. Hats off.

Nick Offerman, woodworker and author of Paddle Your Own Canoe, Gumption, and Good Clean Fun

Gary Rogowski has written an engaging biography that traces his development from a youthful student searching for a meaningful path in life to a highly respected and accomplished furniture maker and teacher. Alternating chapters describe his experiences as a woodworker and as a hiker and mountaineer in his native Pacific Northwest, illustrating his view that the lessons learned in each endeavor are the same. They are lessons in the quality of thinking that allows one to overcome internal barriers to internal goals. While furniture makers will recognize many of the lessons learned as their own, this book will appeal to anyone who has worked hard to identify and develop their own gifts.

Miguel Gmez-Ibez, president, North Bennet Street School

Do good work. There will be evidence. We would all do well to heed the advice of Gary Rogowski. He is one of those rare individuals who has come to peace with excellence. In this charming tale, he reveals a few of his secrets and plenty of his mistakes, so the rest of us might listen and learn. From tales of wood to tales in the woods, Rogowskis aim is true.

Joyce Cherry Cresswell, author of A Great Length of Time, 2017 Oregon Book Awards winner in fiction

Gary Rogowski loves to rock climb and also has a deep love for woodworking. Both disciplines require courage, concentration, and a developed sense of method; one wrong step, one wrong cut. Garys book delves into this synchronicity with enjoyable anecdotes of climbing and woodworking interlaced with serious discussion of the importance of focus, practice, patience, and how we become masters of craft.
Roland Johnson, contributing editor, Fine Woodworking, and author of Tauntons Complete Illustrated Guide to Bandsaws

This is a book to inspire anyone who wants to do work that has meaning and purpose. It is also about becoming a creative, compassionate, and forgiving person through the pursuit of excellence in ones chosen vocation; the journey to craft mastery becomes a journey of self-realization. Gary reflects honestly and at times painfully on what his life and work have taught him and in so doing gives us permission to learn something about our own innermost feelings and aspirations. He is a role model for what education should be about: to provide us with the necessary creative and intellectual skills so we can become the person we know we can be.

Philip Koomen, furniture designer and maker, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Chartered Society of Designers

Reading Handmade is like sitting down with a friend full of stories and the hard-earned wisdom acquired in doing work he loves. Gary Rogowski is frank, affectionate, encouraging, unsparing, entertaining, and humble. He passes on to his reader a passion for making lasting things by hand, one creation at a time, a pursuit and skill little-honed and much-needed in our time.

Colleen Morton Busch, author of Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire

We need more books like thismore books about why-to instead of just how-to. Gary Rogowski does an excellent job of giving us a memoir of his own development as a craftsman, combined with a thoughtful exploration of the mindset that allows, or even compels, a person to have the discipline it takes to reach mastery step by step by step.

Jim Dillon, woodworking instructor, Highland Woodworking, Atlanta

Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction

Gary Rogowski

Handmade

Copyright 2017 by Gary Rogowski. All rights reserved.

All photos by the author, unless otherwise noted.

Cover photo 2017 David L. Minick / Total Access

www.totalaccessphoto.com

Author photo by Justin Lambert, U.K.

Published by Linden Publishing

2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721

(559) 233-6633 / (800) 345-4447

WoodworkersLibrary.com

ISBN 978-1-61035-314-4

135798642

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

In the fall of 1989, I was newly married and sorely in need of a unifying piece of furniture. Having just moved to Portland, Oregon, I had no idea where to turn, so I asked a curator of a prominent local exhibit hall, who gave me three names, singling out one in particular for his unusual style. A week later Gary Rogowski was at our door.

My then-wife and I had decided that our most important piece of furniture should be a dining room tablehopefully a spacious one, constructed flexibly enough that it could hold forth when needed, but fold up to take a more supplementary position when not needed. With that in mind, we had found a photo of a classic, dark-wood, gate-leg table. Youve probably seen the typewith hinged leaves that can fold down at the sides, partly covering the gathering of its legs.

Gary looked at the photo for a long moment, then shook his head. I dont like this, he finally said. It looks like a bug. After we all shared a laugh, a sense of uncertainty set in. Sure, the table doesnt look like much when in its folded position, but thats not its prime time; more important, this is how gate-leg tables are made. Let me play with this for a few days, Gary said. There has to be a better way to design a gate-leg table.

Before leaving, Gary said a few words about his preferred style, an eclectic mix hed developed over the years that he called Oriental Deco. We had little idea what he meant, but the work we saw in his portfolio was clearly expert and gorgeous, so we paid him to draw up some tentative designs and waited.

Some weeks later, Gary brought back a scheme for a large oval table that had a clean, somewhat modernist beauty when opened, and then an entirely different beauty when closed; in some ways, in fact, it was particularly stunning when folded up. The down leaves, which formed most of the oval on each side, swooped toward the floor and up again almost like a schooner. When the legs were folded up behind them, they formed a spare, geometric design that recalled the serenity of a traditional Japanese home. The combinationa few strong lines rounded out by a gentle curvedid indeed have a Deco feel, with an Oriental spirit.

It has been nearly thirty years since Gary built this tabledoing so, incidentally, only after mocking the whole thing up, several times, in cardboard, building it with stunning pieces of cherry wood, and hand-finishing it with round after round of elbow grease and his own proprietary series of wood oils. I have held onto this piece through a divorce, several moves, a remarriage, and the abuses of young children. To this day, anyone joining us for dinner remarks on the singularity of its design and the obvious quality of its workmanship.