Blog
East Meets West (Or Vice Versa)
We are often asked if the traditional western practice of designing objects (such as furniture) to whole number harmonic ratios could have also been the case in the…
Wonder
It’s natural to gaze with wonder at a blazing sunset or a beautiful painting. A brilliant idea on the other hand is altogether different. It can slap…
Learning To See
If you read the book By Hand and Eye, it gives your spouse the right to bust your chops. You’re the guy or gal who read all about…
The Seven Secrets of Cottage
A book only needs two things to get written. It begins with questions. Maybe it’s just one big question like “How did our ancestors solve all those design…
Step away from the tape measure
Proportions do all the real work, numbers on a tape measure are secondary. Inches or centimeters tell us nothing about why a design works. No more than if…
New Design Video Available
We’re pleased to announce the release of a new design video, “By Hand and Eye by Design - Designing a Worktable”. This video is a walk through of…
New design video coming soon!
Jim and I are putting the final touches on a design video titled " By Hand and Eye by Design. It's an over the shoulder look at the…
Cracking the Coffer Code
English oak chest; 16th century. Image from Wiki Commons, public domain. For George Walker and me what is truly fascinating about these early chests is that they…
Pinch Sticks Plus
We nearly always use pinch sticks to record and transfer the distance between two points--in this case the span between the jambs of a door frame. It occurred…
By Hand and Eye Workshop
Every woodworker I know wants to get better at design. Yet it’s hard to carve out time to devote to it. Perhaps it’s because most of us…
