July 2003 • Furniture |
Jacob Cress: Cabinetmaker
He doesn’t necessarily consider himself an artist; he’s a cabinetmaker.
He doesn’t work in a studio, rather a workshop. He wouldn’t refer
to his work as art, but he’s proud to call it finely crafted traditional
furniture … with a twist. Jake Cress has been building fine, traditionally
styled furniture since 1974 in his workshop in Fincastle, Va., but also started
making what he calls "animated" or "funny" furniture.
These whimsical pieces are designed to poke fun at the serious nature of
traditional furniture styles, and while they were dreamed up by Cress to
satisfy his humorous side, they have gained him notoriety as well.
TCR: How did you first become interested in and get involved
in making furniture and how did your work evolve from where it started to
the work you create today?
JC:In 1974, when I was a struggling, unemployed
actor, my brother suggested we open a cabinet shop in our hometown. The
idea was born of desperation
and based on our high school shop training, not a subject at which I excelled.
This venture was a near total failure, but it awakened in me a desire to
create things of lasting and natural beauty.
Sometime later, my wife and
I, in an act as rational as a clothesline on a submarine, elected to move
to the country and open a cabinet shop in Virginia.
Or, to be more accurate, she commuted to the city to work and I set up
my shop and wondered where the customers were.
This romantic foray into our prosperous
future began with a three-story mill, well over 100 years old, built of
three-foot-thick stone walls, huge chamfered
beams, and in serious need of some sort of rudimentary heating system.
It was there that I taught myself the skills to become a proper cabinetmaker.
TCR: Have there been major turning points in your career?
JC: After
years of building the traditional pieces, I became bored with it and
resolved to
try something different. I started thinking things like "why
not make an elegant Chippendale table with one corner artfully peeled back
to reveal a section of a chessboard?" After that, the ideas kept flowing
and people started noticing my pieces. Then the pieces started becoming
more animated and more outrageous.
Show organizers wanted to display
my animated furniture and museums wanted it for their modern art collections. "Hickory
Dickory Clock" is
a grandfather clock that has come alive to catch a mouse running up one side
with its pendulum, while another mouse scurries up the other side of the
clock. That piece was originally a gift to the Art Museum of Western Virginia,
and was recently sold at a Sotheby’s auction to private collector.
People
from magazines called. Newspapers called. Book publishers wanted to use images
of "OOPs!" which is a Chippendale style chair that has
lost one of the balls from its ball and claw feet and is straining to recapture
it. That piece is on display at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.
TCR: What is the most difficult challenge in making a living
as a cabinetmaker?
JC:Getting
recognition all sounds quite grand, I’m sure, but I am
neither rich nor famous and am still very much struggling to make a living.
In
addition to cabinetmaking, I refinish furniture. I once refinished 84 cherry
side tables for a hotel. We also have a Bed and Breakfast in the Victorian
wing of our 19th-century house, and customers are welcome to stay while
considering the possibilities of wood.
TCR: How to you market yourself and your work?
JC:My
Web site at www.jakecress.com is
helpful in bringing in business and my work is in one local gallery. Occasionally,
people stop by my shop to
buy something from my large inventory of pieces. Or they’ll stop in
to commission something. So far, word of mouth has been the best form of
advertising for me.
