I remember sitting on an old maple stump in my father`s woodshed, watching him shape a piece of black ash into an axe handle for a neighbour. The wood was clamped between his knees and a post with a notch into which one end of the work-piece rested. Shavings curled away and fell onto the plank floor around his feet as he pulled his drawknife along the straight grain of the ash. I remember the soft light of the coal oil lantern and the silence - except for the even swish of the drawknife. Slowly, from the rough block, a fair curve emerged - centuries of craft and understanding releasing form and function that had grown in the tree, waiting for the hands of the woodworker.

Anyone who owned one of my father`s axe handles was fortunate, indeed. My father knew wood. He knew where to locate its suppleness and strength, how to uncover its beauty. He knew how to find its harmony and balance. What I learned from my father is how to look at wood, how to work with it; not against it.

When you work with wood, it will cooperate. When you try to control it, it will defeat you every time. My rural childhood allowed me to spend a lot of time among the trees that eventually became handles for tools or pieces of furniture. I saw how they grew. I saw them push through the detritus on the forest floor, search for moisture in rocky ground, twist around each other in a struggle to reach the light. I saw them go barren in winter as they have down through the ages, lying dormant until once again in spring, the sap of life ran through their veins adding yet another concentric circle to their girth.

When you look at `country` furniture, I think this is what it represents - this connectedness with history, this timelessness - a kind of continuum. It is hand-crafted and hand-worn, warm and unpretentious. It gives us a feeling that the past is not lost, that we are not alone. It is clear that we are not the only ones who feel this way.

When we build furniture for our customers, we are creating the icons of a community of people who are connected by a sense of life and style whether they dwell in condominiums or log homes. My hands need wood. Wood connects me to something way back in my history.