Darrell Peart

The Artisan Furnituremaker: A Creative Survival Guide Darrell Peart

Darrell Peart is a custom furnituremaker located in Seattle,
Washington. He is one of the leading authorities on Greene &
Greene and lectures about design, woodworking and the history of the
Greene brothers. He is the author of Greene & Greene: Design
Elements for the Workshop and In the Greene & Greene
Style. He has been in
woodworking for over fifty years.


In his latest book Peart discusses the furnituremaker and what it
takes to be successful in the field. He touches on The Makers
Movement, the commitment to your craft, in this case furnituremaking,
and the acquisition of technical skill. However, the main thesis of
the book is how to produce work that is original in nature. To
produce adequate work is to follow the rules, obtain some technical
skills, and work at your craft. To excel and create art that is
infused with emotion and is original in nature, one has to have
intuition and inspiration. This book is primarily a text on how to
create and design. It is not a rule based book but rather an
exploration of the methods the author has used during his long career
to forge a very successful custom furniture business and produce art
of lasting value.




draws upon William Varnum's book, Industrial Arts Design.
However, he stresses that this is just a starting point and that
these equations and rules can not create originally inspired art.
Intellect, intuition, and inspiration are all discussed in relation
to art and craft. There is a thorough discussion of how Greene &
Greene approached design and many examples are used to demonstrate
their design brilliance. From there Peart moves on to demonstrate how
you can enhance your own design and craftsmanship abilities by a
process of what he calls "Design DNA" . Design DNA is a framework
for asking the right questions and these questions may differ from
person to person but the actual process is discussed at length. There
is also a discussion on how to avoid the pitfalls of poor design.