Presently, I do not have Treenware for sale on my website. I particpate in a number of art fairs during the year, and I have my work in three shops besides Walnut Creek Gallery. For that reason, regardless of how hard I work, I have a hard time keeping up. Eventually, I want to sell all my work at my own gallery and from my website, but for now, that isn't possible.  

Treenware History

The Early Years

I lived in Madison, Wisconsin from 1977 until 1983, during which time I received my masters degree in nutritional science,  worked for two years as a research specialist, started work on my Ph.D, and finally quit school to carve wooden spoons for a living.

Shortly after I arrived in Madison, I was uncertain about my career choice and revived some old hobbies, perhaps to offset the dissatisfaction I was experiencing with my graduate work. I began sketching again,  a hobby from high school, and eventually started carving again, a hobby from a decade earlier when I was a boy scout. In fact, the first merit badge I recieved as a boy scout was Woodcarving. On a trip home to Pennslvania to visit my family, I retrieved my boy scout carving knives and took them back to Madison with me.

Over the next few years, I carved a wide variety of items in a wide variety of styles: duck decoys, relief carvings, and wooden kitchenware. I had seen a picture of two walnut spoons in a book about treenware. That book defined 'treenware' as any functional wooden household object. Typically the object is small and made from one piece of wood. These days, 'treenware' seems to be most often used to refer to wooden kitchenware. I tend to think of it as the wood counterpart to the word 'earthenware'. Earthenware is made of earth, and treenware is made of tree.

The first two of such pieces were made in 1978 and are pictured to the right. The spoon was worked on over a period of many weeks. I eventually gave it to my mother and she asked me if I would make a fork to match. As you might imagine, my mother has accumulated quite a treenware collection over the decades. Recently she has been giving me some pieces back including this salad set,  to put in the archives.

While I continued to experiment with a variety of projects, over the next few years, kitchen utensils and especially wooden spoons, became my signature item.

The Business Begins

In 1981, I wanted to become a member of an arts and craft cooperative  in Madison, and I was required to submit samples of my work to be judged. At the time, I was returning to graduate school and there had been a paperwork mistake so that my funding was delayed for a month. I took the opportunity to make some wooden utensils so that I could apply for membership in the cooperative. I chose to submit treenware items from my repertoire because I could carve them faster than anything else.

I was accepted and three weeks later, the first spoon sold. The fact that somebody would actually buy something I had made, changed everything, and the idea entered my head that I might be able to make a living as a woodcarver. I continued to work toward my PhD for another year, trying to live a double life as a woodcarver and graduate student. But anyone who has done either knows that being a graduate student or a woodcarver is a full life job and more.

One day in April  of  1982, I left graduate school to pursue the life of a craftsman, eventually moving back east to my native Pennsylvania.

During the first  year, each treenware piece was a unique piece of art.  I spent a great amount of time on them and made very little money. As the years went by and I experienced the reality of making a living at such an enterprise, I became more organized and production oriented.

However, I did occaisionally do a special piece that was just for the sake of the art, not worrying about how many hours it took or how much it would sell for. These pieces I often gave away  to friends and family and for this reason many of them are still accessible to me.

The cherry spoon to the left is one such piece.  It  also  became part of my mother's collection and now is in the archives. This was done entirely by hand and took countless hours.

A decade later I had moved to power tools and was carving a variety of pieces, but I retained the pattern of separating the business from the art. For nearly all of the thirty years that I have been carving for a living, the cornerstone of the business has been treenware.

Treenware Today

My style has changed considerably over the years, acquiring a more contemporary design.  I trimmed down my repertoire  somewhat, to simplify my business and to focus on improving  pieces that have proven to be the most popular over the years. My three basic categories of treenware are: kitchen utensils (which consists of spoons, slotted spoons, spatulas, ladles,  and salad sets), crocks, and bowls.

In  the last decade, I have improved on my  bowl sculpting skills  so that  my bowls are thinner and of unusual designs. I also can carve much larger bowls.  The crocks are my own invention, coming along  about eight years ago in response to requests for a containor to hold kitchen utensils. They have since taken on a life of  their own, and are often purchased to be displayed as an individual piece.

While my repertoire is small, there is variation within all three categories. All pieces are available in a variety of sizes, the kitchen utensils in measured units, with the bowls and crocks in more random sizes. Because I employ different woods and use nearly all parts of the tree, my treenware often exhibits a variety of, muted, colors.

As I mentioned above, I am unable to present  treenware on my website at this time, but I plan to do so sometime soon. Until then I hope you can attend one of the art fairs I show at, visit one of the shops that carry my treenware, or better yet, come to Walnut Creek Gallery and I can show you my work in person.

If you would like to see pictures of my current work, click the image to the right.