Craig Windom
For furnituremaker Craig Windom, it’s all about the wood. “I love old wood,” he says. “I love searching for it. It’s usually wood that has a certain patina or grain. It may have been real weathered and beaten up and had some nails in it, but I can see the potential in it. I clean it up and it becomes a beautiful piece of wood.”
Windom, 54, studied range management at Washington State University and worked in John Day, Ore., managing grasslands and how cattle graze on them. “One day, my girlfriend, who is now my wife, purchased a piece of bent willow furniture, and it fascinated me,” he says. “I felt compelled to try and duplicate the chair.”
He crafts his furniture in a large shop at his home in Veneta, Ore.,
where each piece of furniture takes shape as he works on it. “I can
never think through a project in its entirety before I start working on
it,” he says. “I start with a basic idea of what I’ll do and figure out
the details as I go along.”
Windom’s recent work involves creating furniture from found objects. The Detour Table (below) is made from recycled clear vertical-grain fir, a vintage metal highway
sign and old brake lights and wheels. “I love going into a thrift store
or a flea market and finding some weird old object,” he says. “It’s about the wood and the found object and how to combine
them. That’s the challenge. It’s easy to combine things; the difficult
part is doing it in way that makes sense to somebody.”
The 41/2-foot-long by 30-inch-high by 18-inch-wide Detour Table is $950.
Contact Craig Windom at 541-935-4147 or via e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
His furniture can also be seen at the Mary Lou Zeek Gallery (335 State
St., 503-581-3229) in Salem, Ore. and at the Earthworks Gallery (2222
N. Highway 101, 541-547-4300) in Yachats, Ore.
