Television Interview with Howard Green of BNN

A few weeks ago a producer from Business News Network (BNN) called asking me to participate in an interview entitled "The Business of Craftmanship".

The focus of the segment was to discover how people can turn the craft of making things into an actual business, and in addition to me discussing the craft of fine furniture making there were also interviews with custom guitar maker William "Grit" Laskin, and shoemaker-to-the-stars John Fluevog.

The interview took place last Tuesday at a gallery in Toronto called Industrial Storm, and it would be an understatement to say that I was incredibly nervous going in.



Thankfully the show's host Howard Green was incredibly professional and easy going, and his friendly, relaxed demeanor worked wonders setting me at ease before the interview began.

Howard's interview with me can be seen at the following link:

http://watch.bnn.ca/headline/#clip590938

Meanwhile Howard's interview with William "Grit" Laskin is here, and the interview with John Fluevog is here.

Levee Cocktail Table

In 2009 Kevin was entering the second year of the Industrial Woodworking program at Conestoga College. Since he was now familiar with the basics of woodworking and fine furniture making, he was now challenged with the task of designing and making a marketable piece of furniture.

The easiest thing to do, I told him, would be to simply design and make something cool in the hope that maybe it would sell. The more practical approach would be to research the market first to find opportunities in the things that were missing and in need of being made. With this in mind Kevin met with Gary Flaherty and Hanson Tan of the Industrial Storm showroom in Toronto for ideas on what types of furniture he should be considering for his portfolio.

Kevin came out of that meeting with ambitions of designing some interesting custom cocktail tables, and the Levee Table became one of his very first creations.


The initial prototype was the Levee Table shown here, which measures 54" long x 21" deep x 16" high. The tapered wedges were made of bleached Zebrawood, resting on a satin black lacquer plinth. The tempered glass top was set on offsets of rubber and satin aluminum.

This table was numbered 2009-#001.