Teak Bench
30" deep x 42" wide x 40" high

I made this piece for a show called "Benches and Collages" at the Shaw Cramer Gallery in Vineyard Haven. The opening reception for the show was on a Friday evening, I was designing the piece in the car that Monday, as my family was driving home to the Vineyard from Michigan. I hoped I had enough teak at my shop for the bench I envisioned! Well, condensed version: I was a half hour late for the opening reception, and the finish was barely dry but it was a success! It was my most daring design to date, and it now lives in an equally daring home in Chilmark.

gary@spykman.com
www.spykman.com

When people learn that I am a furniture maker, they often ask what style of furniture I make. I never know how to answer. I suppose I could say, "I make unique contemporary furniture whose design is informed by a wide variety of twentieth-century European and American design movements." Accurate, but rather pretentious sounding. Truth be told, I don't wish my furniture to be of any style, because styles, like fashions, come and go. This is why we refer to a thing as being in style or out of style. Good design should be timeless, and that is what I try to achieve. My aim is that the furniture you purchase today will still look fresh twenty, fifty or a hundred years from now.