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Two Waldoboro craftsmen are carving out a legacy. William Evans and Valdemar Skov have created the new formal dining room table and two dozen chairs, respectively, for the Blaine House, the Maine governor’s mansion in Augusta. The furnishings are the flagship project of the private group Friends of the Blaine House, replacing furniture deemed too fragile for frequent use.
Both men are enthusiastic about the commissioned pieces, already in use at the Blaine House.
“It’s wonderful,” said Skov, 39. “It’s a commission a lot of cabinetmakers would die for. It’s public and in a prestigious place. These could be museum pieces someday.”
Evans, 61, added, “I’m very honored to have been chosen to do the work, and to have a tangible, ongoing legacy. It’s nice to have one’s name out there, to receive a certain degree of recognition.”
Evans’ design for the table uses mahogany, cross-banded in rosewood with a maple inlay. There are four mahogany pedestal bases with reeded legs tipped with brass casters. Two of these sections are tilt-top tables, which can be lifted up and used independently. Three leaves can be inserted to extend the table to its full 20-foot length, enough to seat 24 people.
Skov’s chairs are also made of mahogany. The back splat of each chair is carved with a white pine cone and tassel, the Maine state flower. The upholstered seat cushion is dark green with a gold fleur de lis pattern that matches the wallpaper colors of the room.
The table was delivered Sept. 23 in a pouring rain. Skov has delivered 11 of 24 chairs so far. The furniture was dedicated at a reception held by the Friends group in October.
The search for the new furnishings began when Friends of the Blaine House solicited proposals from Maine woodworkers listed in the juried arts registry of the Maine Arts Commission, seeking pieces that fit the style of the Colonial Revival house.
Evans and Skov, who have worked together on projects in the past, submitted their proposal as a team in November 2001, although each developed his pieces independently.
“The quality of work that both of them do is exemplary,” said Margaret Kelly, co-chair of the Friends group with former Maine legislator Neil Rolde. “It’s exciting to have that level of craftsmanship in the state of Maine. We’re so thrilled with the project.”
The commission for the table and chairs is in excess of $60,000, Kelly said, all privately funded. An anonymous donor paid for the table, while individuals and institutions are underwriting the chairs at a cost of $2,000 apiece.
Both Evans and Skov are veteran craftsmen well equipped to execute the Blaine House commission.
Evans trained under Dutch master cabinetmaker David Hendriks in Toronto, then worked in the Ontario capitol for 15 years, moving to Waldoboro 15 years ago. His new works, all on commission, make up 60 percent of what he does, with restoration work being the other 40 percent.
Skov, of Danish descent, apprenticed for sculptor-cabinetmaker Jonathan Clowes, also of Waldoboro, beginning in 1986. It was during that time that he developed a love of wood. He has had his own woodcarving business since 1990. Many of his commissions are private, but one public example is the carvings on the podium of the Maine speaker of the House, which helped cement his reputation in Augusta.
After their selection was final in February, Evans and Skov started work in their respective shops.
Evans joked that the first thing he did was “got the deposit and quickly spent it.” He began looking at flitches of veneer, bundles of sheets laid together in sequence, seeking the right look for the tabletop.
“I tend to like [veneers] with a lot of figure [designs that include the light and dark grain patterns] in them,” Evans explained. “Some had too much on a 20-foot table. It’s very important to strike the right balance.”
He brought in the materials to let them settle in his Main Street shop, so they could acclimate to the conditions there.
He worked up shop drawings, done in sections, which were necessary to construct the table.
“The design is patterned after one I had already done, so very clearly I knew where I was going,” Evans said. “I needed to work out the details, like the cross-banding of rosewood.”
Factors that concerned Evans in the design stage were that the table would need to withstand very heavy use and would be moved around a lot. That’s why he built it with a sturdy undercarriage and included a tilt-top mechanism, so parts of the table could be broken out for use by smaller groups.
Evans worked on the table, off and on, for six months. Two months alone went into the finishing process done in a French polishing technique.
“I’m very particular about finishing,” he said. “I like to have control over color and sheen.”
There was little in the construction process that Evans hadn’t seen before in a 30-year career. But still “there was a lot of anxiety,” he said. “You know what they say, ‘Small table, small problem, big table … .’ All the veneer was sequenced. If one section gets destroyed, you’d have to start over.”
Evans enjoys doing a wide range of work. Currently, he’s designing a clock tower that also displays a special skeleton sculpture and restoring a circa-1800 table.
“I love the specialty things,” Evans said. “It would drive me crazy to do the same things day in and day out.”
He does more than strictly “high-style” pieces.
“Some pieces, like those in a Shaker style, are a little cleaner,” he said. “There’s not all the detail, and the construction is a little more straightforward. I enjoy making them from time to time. I can get something done in a week or two rather than six months.”
At his shop a ways back up Route 1 and a couple of side roads over, Skov undertook quite a different process in creating the Blaine House chairs.
He began his construction work in March, taking seven weeks to create a prototype chair. From this, Skov has been able to develop a manual that included all the steps in the process in minute detail, so that he would be able to duplicate it at least 24 times.
“It took a lot of head scratching to get the elements of the chair to balance and work right together,” Skov recalled. “Figuring out how to do the job is the crux of the project. Actually doing the work is kind of mechanical, especially with 24 chairs.”
Starting in July, he set up a construction run, milling the parts for the chair, then assembling each, using mortise-and-tenon joinery. Skov estimated that this section of the process took less than half the time, with sanding, planing and shaping taking the rest. When the chairs were assembled, then Skov would send them out to Peter McDonald of McDonald Restoration of Belfast for a hand-rubbed shellac finish.
Skov enjoys working with the mahogany in the chairs.
“It’s nice to work with, especially for carving,” he said. “It’s strong, light and very stable, and it behaves itself. It also looks beautiful with a finish on it.”
Skov has been intermittently working on other small projects while building the chairs. Next up are some architectural door fans.
“It’s a tonic for one’s sanity to take a break,” he said.
Skov’s past works, most of which come from word-of-mouth advertising, range from lions’ head carvings on a reception desk for a Virginia hotel to an Italian Renaissance-style mantelpiece for a home in Cambridge, Mass., to gilded angels for a church in Charleston, S.C.
While he still appreciates a beautiful piece of wood, that’s not always what’s best for many pieces.
“With ornamental carving, you are creating the ornamentation,” he explained. “So the plainer the wood, the better for that purpose. The fancier woods can be distracting from the carvings.”
Although both Evans and Skov admit that handmade pieces are too expensive for many, they still tout the value of those one-of-a-kind works.
Evans ticked off the reasons why handmade is better: “First is the quality of the construction. There’s some appalling (manufactured) stuff out there and some that’s serviceable. Also, I’m extremely careful in the materials that I select, matching up the boards with the veneer. I’m very careful with my finishings, and make up all my own stains. Last, I make just what people want. You don’t always get that at a furniture store.”
Skov was more philosophical: “The best handmade furniture has freedom in both aesthetic and functional design, the romance of the ‘handmade’ and a relationship with the maker – both disappearing experiences in today’s world – and the vitality that is absent from identically manufactured goods. In short, it has spirit, and it’s nicer to live with.”
For more information, contact William Evans at 832-4715 or bill@williamevansfurniture.com and Valdemar Skov at 832-5106.
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