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Tom Dahlke
North Fork Woodworks
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North Fork Woodworks also offers custom furniture for inside your home. Whether it's building
a circular stair, figuring out a Charles
Rennie Mackintosh chair, or how to make
hand-cut dovetails look like miniature logs, Tom Dahlke loves the challenge of
tough design problems.
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In the early 1980s Tom was commissioned
to build a pair of historically accurate
dollhouses for a couple very
involved with historic preservation.
That project, and his own personal interest
in early American architecture, led him
to create a series of boxes based on barns
and utility buildings. Apple-orchard sheds
and covered bridges became jewelry boxes.
Boathouses and horse barns became blanket
chests, liquor cabinets, and desks.
Each piece in this architectural furniture
series is built in the shape of the building
and painted to look like the real thing.
Some way or another each piece tells a
little story: it could be the scene inside
the building, peering through the building
onto the surrounding landscape, or a feature
of the base supporting the piece that gives
a snapshot of country life.
Traditional joinery techniques such as
hand-cut dovetails and mortise and tenon
joints are used to construct these boxes.
Handmade hardware is used where appropriate. Whether
it's a horse barn, a junkyard shed, or
a country store, these pieces are all high-quality
functional pieces of furniture, although
as the series evolves each new piece becomes
more a work of art.
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