Mike's at the Nelson Market.

Hey Y'all,
I'm gonna be down at the Nelson market tomorrow from 8 selling some of my new slot together designs. Just outside the market side of the BNZ. Come and say hi. Cheers Mike

Some earlier pieces

Here is a few shots of two pieces that a made a while back. I employed the glass casting skills of friend Jim Mackay to make up the blue shelves and centre piece. The timber is locally grown Rata, which is extremly dense and able to be sanded and polished up to a nice satin sheen. The cabinet is polished stainless steel and the three materials combined to be a nice mix.

The Cabinet was made for a Nelson furniture collective show and was purchased by a friend, which is always nice! The 'Ebb section' sculpture below was made for an exhibition in Nelson. It hung around for a while in our gallery, but was subsequently bought by a dealer in Hong Kong.

 They sent me the photo below of how they displayed it in their gallery, on a lightbox, which i thought looked really cool. wish i'd thought of that... They sold it a little while later to the Korean wood museum. interesting trip on the whole.

Work for the Suter art gallery

Hi All,

Here's a couple of job's recently completed for Nelson's public art gallery-The Suter - Te Aratoi O Whakatu. Straight joinery jobs but satisfying to work on nonetheless. There was a bit of mathematics involved in the making the card racks accomodate all the different sized cards. i'm not ashamed to admit that a calculator was employed. The card racks fold together and lock to deter possible light fingeredness by theatre goers at night....

The Light cabinet is situated at the back of the gallery in a hallway and is being used to exhibit their ceramic and small sculpture collection.

Urbis article

Urbis recently featured a spread on Nelson art and design. I was lucky enough to be included and here is the piece on my work.

Dont read the final sentence as it doesn't make a lot of sense. I must have been talking to fast for the journalist or something! what it meant to say was that, Living in Nelson,  there wasn't the financial pressure with higher living costs that a place like Auckland imposes on you. Therefore you are not under as much pressure to produce products that are more commercially viable and cut corners on quality etc. Geddit? email me if you need more clarification...Haha. Thanks to Urbis for the cool article anway!

Nesting tables for the olds.

These tables were made for my parents in Wellington after a request from my mother who was getting jaded with her(darling) grandchildren knocking over cups of tea etc. on the lounge carpet.

 Made from 8mm toughened glass and some 30mm ply i had kicking round the workshop. Cheers for the job Mum!

Spacejunk - The Desk

Here's a couple of shots of a recent commission i did for some local clients. I designed them a large custom shelf for their hall/entranceway at the same time and so i wanted the desk to tie in visually.

 The detail is of the draw front which is made up from laminated ply to continue the look.

The Woode

Also, here's a link to some designing i've been doing over the last couple of years for a great NZ company called Photoarts. The produce signage and displays and got in touch with me to design a range of sustainable display stands and brochure racks. They are committed to using local industry to produce their products and are using the latest in cutting edge printing technology and enviromentally friendly inks etc.
I was priviliedged to be flown up to the Pride in Print awards in Auckland recently where our design took out a Gold medal in the Environmental category.

Wow! I'm a blogger.

Hi all and welcome to my new blog. This has been on my to do list for a while! Hopefully it will be a good way of keeping you all updated with what i'm up to as this hasn't come to pass on my website(of which it's ways i am not wise, so as such has lay dormant for the last wee while!)

I've just uploaded a shot of my latest design to be put into production. A lightweight stool that is easily disassembled(only 2 screws...!) for ease of  transport and storage.

 It's also featured in the latest urbis magazine along with a swag of other quality Nelson talent (Including my fine friend David Haig).

The stool continues on from the table design i came up with earlier. I couldn't find a sturdy camping table for an upcoming family trip and wanted something stylish and transportable that would also stand up to the strong Pakawau westerly. So i came up with this design made from 10 pieces of 18mm plywood and a couple of hinges.

Assembled and unassembled

Plywood has always been my material of choice and i've always been interested in either slotting or stacking it to create mass or form. This is probably out of laziness on my part as you can create a substantial piece from relatively few materials. This was also the original idea behind my Spacejunk range of shelving.

Thanks for reading this.  Pass it on to anyone you think will be into it and subscribe as i'll be updating it regularly and you won't want to miss out on what's hot and happening in top of the south furniture design. Cheers,

Mike