3 minute read
Photo Essay: The making of beautiful things
For David Cloud, the principal artisan and owner of Thornbury Wood, the art of making furniture is the symmetry of what happens when history and design intersect. It all comes together in…
The making of BEAUTIFUL THINGS
Photos by Jie Deng Text by Richard L. Gaw
When everything is going right – when the woodworker’s hands are working in perfect harmony with the tools and the wood is surrendering to the intended design of what it will eventually become – it is a quiet and rhythmic symphony.
Throughout most of his life and for the past several years full time, David Cloud, the owner of Thornbury Wood in nearby Glen Mills, has been the maestro of his own symphony of wood. Working in collaboration with other skilled artisans, the functional elegance of Thornbury Wood is all on display in homes in Chadds Ford and throughout southeastern Pennsylvania: Farm tables, staircases, pergolas, countertops, built-in cabinetry and custom bars.
Continued on Page 44
Thornbury Wood
Continued from Page 43
In an age of technology that has revolutionized the art of making furniture and made it possible to churn out more products in a shorter amount of time, Cloud approaches his work piece-by piece. Ninety percent of his arsenal includes four hand-held tools – a chisel, a hand saw, a hand plane and a spoke shave.
“It is all about synchronization,” said Cloud, a veteran woodworking at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia about working with sharpened hand tools and knowing how to sharpen them. It is also about knowing the grain
structure and density of various grains of wood – graciously accepting that mahogany is different than walnut which is different from oak.
There is one additional tool that never leaves Cloud’s think pad that combines his career in aerospace technology with his future plans as a craftsman.
Thornbury Wood
Continued from Page 45
“If not sketching, I am always thinking of ways to do things better,” Cloud said. “I am at a turning point in my business where I still want people to have beautiful things, but one-of-a-kind pieces can be very expensive because there are so many hours involved. I am trying to use my technology background and all of its tools and methodologies to determine how to leverage ways to make beautiful things more cost effectively, while still keeping the hand-made appeal of what we do.”
Cloud refers to his craft as “the macro-merging of history and design.”
“I am study all of these periods of our history every day and their impact on design,” he said, “but at the end of the day, it is about combining the knowledge base in my head with the natural materials that are at my disposal, and somewhere in the middle of that intersection, emerges something beautiful.”
To learn more about David Cloud and Thornbury Wood, visit www. thornburywood.com.
