Guild Meeting Recap -- Jeff Miller on Design

On Friday night in a packed room at Fort Houston, the Cumberland Furniture Guild hosted furniture maker Jeff Miller to speak about design and the creative process. Jeff’s approach to design is more about problem solving than inspiration or even talent. He discussed how he makes time to play in the shop, encouraging new ideas to emerge. He also discussed standard methods such as using ratios to help make decisions, looking to nature for interesting shapes and setting structure and practicality aside to give room for surprises and novel connections. To see some examples of Jeff’s designs, have a look at his website here.

The Perfect Chair – The Jeff Miller Way!

Jeff Miller seems to be everywhere you go in woodworking these days. You see him on the cover of Fine Woodworking and Popular Woodworking magazines and in numerous articles and books. You can also see him August 8 & 9 in Middle Tennessee at The Cumberland Furniture Guild meeting and a Saturday workshop on chair design. His work is just by Jeff’s nature “perfection!”

I was visiting with Jeff recently in his Chicago studio and he gave me a tour of how one of his “perfect” chairs was developed over a twenty-year period. Iteration after iteration was tried to achieve the vision Jeff started with. Jeff shows it takes patience, persistence and talent to achieve his beautiful work. Jeff will share with us his process and help us design more comfortable, beautiful and durable chairs.

The following video tells about a recent workshop Jeff taught on the subject of chair design. I hope you'll join us at our Guild meeting on August 8 from 7 pm - 9 pm at Fort Houston (500 Houston Street, Nashville, TN 37203).

Chuck Brock