In Tim Swanberg’s shop, he has the last word on ingenuity and expression. That is where he meets the challenge of the uncompromising workmanship in wood and homemade furniture. There, his imagination spills over like a spring freshet. As a full-time, professional woodworker Swanberg does daily as a living, what many people only have the time or opportunity to do as a hobby.
Tim Swanberg Woodwork
Indeed, there are enough aspects to the art and perceptivity of woodworking to prevent Swanberg from ever getting bored. He senses intuitively what most woodworkers learn through perpetual endeavoring – that any method to be successful must be performed with artistry, and artistry requires preparation, application, and rehearsal.
“There are always new designs, new materials, and new challenges,” told Suite101 (Interview with Brian D'Ambrosio, June 2010). “I try to differentiate myself from the larger shops by channeling into specific formats of design and construction. There’s an advantage to being able to have the time to think about complicated design options, and to be able to execute them slowly. I have to wear so many different hats.”
Tim Swanberg feels that bigger manufacturers are too streamlined and too profit driven, and therefore much less capable of adapting and suiting to specific individual requirements. Most of Swanberg’s work is commission-based. He’ll also dabble in speculative work, but since it’s such an uncertain venture – investing hundreds of hours constructing an unsolicited, experimental piece – he tends to stick to the certitude of commissions.
One of the disadvantages – and perhaps attractions – of homemade furniture is that it takes the lone builder much longer to finish a piece than it would for a larger business employing 15 different workers. For the lone builder, time is, indeed, of the essence. Putting 100 hours into something that at first was thought to take just 80 to complete, leaves the woodworker feeling under-compensated. Understanding just how long it takes to finish a certain model or design, is one of the hallmarks of experience.
Conversely, the lone builder has more time to develop and nurture contacts with the client, and is better apt to translate and channel their ideas and wishes into practical construction methods.
As a way of separating from the pack, Swanberg hones his distinctiveness through the implementation of uncommon techniques. “I do a lot here that may not be possible in larger shops, such as marquetry,” says Swanberg. “It’s a super evolved, dynamic and technical accomplishment. It looks a lot like inlaying. The hand techniques, the handcutting and handcut dovetailing can be done on exquisite wood. This type of surface decoration is rarely put on mass-produced furniture, because it makes something personal for a mass audience- and that’s a conflict.”
Being one of the many exceedingly talented artisans of Montana is a challenge, but being a woodworker in tiny Ovando can be even more taxing, and it requires greater efforts to distinguish. “There are a lot of woodworkers out there, and, here in Ovando, people just don’t bump into me. I’ve realized that to survive I need to separate myself from the crowd with design ethic, and by removing my woodworking as far as possible from the table saw, the plainer, and on the joiner, the tools that every woodworking shop has.”
Tim Swanberg, Montana Woodworker
Swanberg wasn’t a born woodworker. There are no stories of him displaying apt skill as a child, chiseling a life from wood as a prodigy. Rather, he discovered the joys of woodworking one day as a college student studying fish biology. “I bought a book by Dutch cabinetmaker Thomas Moser in 1997,” says Swanberg. “And I loved the passion and materials and techniques of Shaker-style furniture.”
He also became enamored with the work and design ethic of Tage Frid, a native of Denmark who helped revive the art of handmade furniture in the United States, beginning in the late 1940's. Frid had a reputation for insisting that things be made soundly.
“I just read, read, and read,” says Swanberg, who grew up in Seattle and has lived in Ovando nearly 14 years. “I took a leap of faith that I could do it successfully as a career.”
Another technique Swanberg has developed into his apt frame of reference is termed book matching.
Book matching generates nearly identical half pieces, ordinarily attached along a centerline. Swanberg book matches head frames to fabricate the look of bilateral symmetry and mirror imaging.
“Book matching is another aspect of fine furniture, where you wouldn’t have the time to do, if you were working in a larger facility. That kind of continuity and consciousness occurs here, and I have to be cohesive.”
Currently, Swanberg has about a two-year backlog, and he’s about five months into a piece that he estimates will take him at least another month to complete. Most of his clients are word-of-mouth references. “Every piece of furniture you sell is your neon calling card. It’s nice to put out something that’s not mass-produced or made in a Chinese factory.”
The year 2010 marks his 12th year of building handcrafted furniture celebrating the natural, unadorned beauty of wood; nearly a dozen years of graceful material crafted for a long, useful life. To Swanberg, however, woodworking isn’t the mastery of trade but rather the honest pursuit of all the various techniques to which he wishes to be exposed. “I’ve got lots to improve upon and learn. When I’m all done in 30 or 40 years, at that point, hopefully, I’ll have it all figured out.”
Energized by a sense of tradition, timelessness, and true love, Swanberg sometimes goes months without leaving Ovando; last year, he went 8 consecutive months without once driving the 60 plus miles to Missoula. “I get so absorbed into the process,” says Swanberg, stuffing the woodstove with tiny twigs for kindling. “Since it takes me one week to do the marquetry on a music stand, and one day will be spent on one small part, I don’t notice time anymore. Seasons come and go fast in here."
Brian D'Ambrosio - Brian D'Ambrosio is the author of more than 500 published articles and seven books, including From Haikus to Hatmaking: A Year in the Life ...
