A Writing Desk

It can take a long time for craft to happen.

Mitch made this writing desk to specs that he and I discussed. The top slab of wood is a 3” thick cut of oak taken down twenty or more years ago in a farmer’s orchard in Northern California. Mitch left the slab’s front edge unfinished, or “live,” the outer skin of the former tree bearing scars, grooves, ridges, maze-like troughs made by a burrowing insect long ago. Over a couple hundred years of growth the trunk settled under its own weight, forming a curve that Mitch used to advantage. As I sit here I’m sitting inside this curve so the desktop wraps gently around me.

Beyond the woodcraft, though, is a life — a couple of them, Mitch’s and mine — and looking at everything that came before I understand how unlikely it is that I’m sitting here today, at this desk, writing.

Mitch and I first met in San Jose at one of the early handmade bike shows, about twenty years ago. As an aside, Mitch speculates that this was right around the time when the tree that made this desktop was cut down. Mitch worked as a mechanic at a small bike shop on the Portland State campus and made the trek down to the San Jose because he was interested in the craft of bike making.

Not long after the bike show, back in Portland, Mitch began working with me at the Page Street workshop. My business was young, but I was picking up a load of orders for custom racks, bike frames, forks and stems, and I needed help. I think I was a terrible boss, though. Mitch was ambitious and wanted to learn, yet I had zero business experience, a selfishly skewed sense of responsibility, didn’t know how to delegate without poisoning the room, was bad with money, etc. Basically I was grumpy, needed lessons in kindness, a general recalibration of my attitude.

This was back when Portland was inexpensive enough that people could still dance the DIY hustle, working a little here, a little there, and pay their way. The Page Street workshop was big and Mitch took over a space in back, began building his own frames and establishing his brand, MAP Cycles. It didn’t take him long. He had a good eye and was turning out immaculately finished bikes. Over a couple of years Mitch’s reputation as a bike maker grew, as did his backlog of orders. He moved down to Chico, California, kept working hard, bought a house at the top of a hill in a town called Paradise. I was envious, he had this huge barn that became his workshop, filled it with machine tools and bike making gear. At some point in all this, Mitch met guy named Charlie, an older woodworker dude who loved to ride bikes.

The morning before the Paradise fire Mitch woke up and his life looked one way, then in a few hours all that was gone. The fire took Mitch’s house and workshop, his laptop, everything but the clothes he wore and the car he drove off in. Not long after, he moved back to Portland, reeling over the loss of stuff and his livelihood.

Remnants

Fast forward a few years: Since the fire Mitch has been rebuilding his life, his tools, his ideas about the future. In the process has, among other things, learned more about woodworking and furniture making. He still owns the property in Paradise. All the burnt stuff is gone, it’s now an acre of grass. He’s made several trips down there and has seen the town slowly rebuilding. A couple of times Mitch returned to Portland pulling a trailer stacked with select pieces of his friend Charlie’s lumber. Like any woodworker who has space for it, Charlie had stockpiled quality wood over the years. Sharing this wood-wealth with Mitch was his way of helping out a friend. This slab of wood I’m now writing on was drying in Charlie’s shop for all that time, waiting for its day.

A twenty-year story is full of turns. In a nutshell, if Mitch hadn’t moved to Portland, met me…If he hadn’t made bikes, hadn’t been alive during a period when bike making was a viable way to make a living, if he hadn’t later moved to Chico, or met Charlie, bought a house in Paradise, etc., and so on…I wouldn’t be sitting here writing on this desk. This makes no mention any of the millions of ways my own weird life could have gone differently, before or since. The threads of our histories are as long, whorled, and intricate as the grain of this wood.

The writing desk fits in front of this window so naturally that even though it’s new I hardly notice it when I walk into the room. Like it’s always been here. When I put my hands on it and slide them over the velvety smooth surface it has a particular sound, a kind of whisper.

In my humble opinion this is one reason we engage with craft, either by buying it or making it. Quality craft carries with it a unique and traceable story, where it came from, who made it, why it’s in the world, and how it got here. There’s decision-making involved, years of experience, problem solving, intention, practice, skill. Definitely luck, sometimes a lot of it, good and bad. All of this world-shaping happens before the object ever becomes what it is. It sets a foundation upon which the next chapter of the story begins.

Your chapter, or in this case, mine.

Thanks, Mitch, for making this writing desk. It’s perfect.

You can see other pieces Mitch made on IG at @mapworksstudio