2011 Archives - Prairie View Furniture

Bellows Commission

Unusual commission to make a Civil War-era bellows into a wine room coffee table

#1101 Drop Box

Named by Connie Lilly of Lipscomb at the April 30th Naming Party at Canadian Art Gallery Down by the tracks, south of the grain elevators in Bovina, the old farmstead was a treasure trove of junk. Every patch of ground served as the final resting place for used-up machinery: husks of old threshers, pull-type combines, and old trucks and cars.

Out a ways from the main machinery piles, a green trunk lid from an old Packard car caught my eye. Closer inspection showed that the weathered paint had an impressive crackle, and the rubbing of various livestock had revealed the red primer. After a long drag through the junk, I managed to get the heavy lid under the fence and loaded in the trailer.

Sections of the trunk lid now serve as panels for the #1101 cabinet. Another scrap pile out in Sherman County, along Palo Duro Creek, yielded the c. 1949 Chevy bumper that has become the front legs on the cabinet. Old kitchen pulls are now door and drawer pulls for the cabinet.

The walnut lumber was harvested from a homestead in the Cherokee Strip area of northern Oklahoma.

#1102 Wheat Tin

Named by Donnie Dendy of Perryton at the April 30th Naming Party at Canadian Art Gallery

Though I had driven by the wooden grain elevators in Waka, Texas, many times and even photographed them more than once, I had never given them a close inspection. But I got a call from a friend telling me that he had been on the backside of the elevators and had spotted some interesting stamped tin that had been nailed over the wood siding. And he even volunteered to help me on the salvage run. So on a hot afternoon, armed with long pry bars and not-tall-enough ladders, we managed to eat a lot of dirt and salvage a few sheets of tin.

One of the tin sheets has printing noting that it was manufactured in Cincinnati, Ohio, and shipped to Farnsworth, Texas, just up the road from Waka. That sheet is now part of the side cladding for the #1102 tall cabinet.

A wagon undercarriage brace, pulled from a burn pile south of Waka has become the door pull, wrapped by a bale’s worth of baling wire. Native walnut and cedar make up the draw box. Layers of milk paint finish out the cabinet front.

#1103 Leanin’ into a Southwest Wind

Named by Sandy Drake of Waka at the April 30th Naming Party at Canadian Art Gallery

Hard to tell for sure what implement the long section of sheet metal had once belonged to—possibly it came from the remains of an old Nichols-Oliver pull-type combine that lay nearby. The Bovina, Texas, farmstead served as a graveyard for an impressive amount of shelled-out machinery. The heavy-gauge sheet metal now clads the sides of the #1103 cabinet. Though perfect for a long seamless run up and over the cabinet, the tin nearly got the best of me before I got it buckled down.

Door and drawer pulls were originally transom window adjustment rods from the long-gone Dreyfoos schoolhouse in eastern Hemphill County. Before the school was demolished it was a strange sight to see the transom windows still in place above the classroom doors—and above that nothing but blue sky; the roof was gone and the ceiling was on the floor.

The cabinet stand is welded up from the only straight pieces of angle reclaimed from a lightweight fuel tank stand that came to an unfortunate end in a high wind. The drawer box is made of native walnut and cedar. Multiple layers of milk paint finish out the door and drawer front.

#1104 The Standing Deere

Named by Diana Anderson of Perryton at the April 30th Naming Party at Canadian Art Gallery.

A couple of years before he moved to town, neighbor Clarence Case bequeathed his old John Deere rotary-hoe plow to me. With six gangs of double-rowed, spiked wheels coupled and cabled together, the wicked mess was more than I could load as a whole, and I sure didn’t want to try to drag it home. So I unbolted a bucket’s worth of bolts and separated the gangs, and then started digging and prying to free them from the accumulated blow sand. The plow was parked on a slope of short grass pasture and at the bottom of the slope a small draw made a good leading dock for the trailer. Clanking and creaking, I would get a gang rolling downhill pointed at the trailer, hoping the whole way that I could avoid catching a pant leg in the spinning tines. I managed to get all the gangs loaded and I didn’t get stuck in the draw.

Clarence’s gift keeps giving and will for years to come. Each rotary hoe wheel has 16 tines; there are 14 wheels per gang, and six gangs or sections, so there are 1,344 tines. Just three of the tines are now drawer pulls on the #1104 sideboard. The metal framework, all bolts and straps, are reconfigured from two plow sections.

The wood on the sideboard is ash that has been sandblasted and stained with a light-fast dye, topped out with several coats of catalyzed lacquer.

#1105 Red Mesa Tine

Named by Lynn Woodward of Shattuck, Oklahoma at the April 30th Naming Party at Canadian Art Gallery.

Anytime I reach for the electric tape to wrap a holey finger on my welding or work gloves, I think of my late friend and neighbor Marie Schneider. She made gloves last for twenty jobs instead of five, and if two baling wire wraps would hold a corral panel, then ten tight wraps would be better. Once when making some pitchfork tine pulls, I checked with Marie to see if she had any old, unused pitchfork heads. We looked high and low but all the old pitchforks were wired, riveted, strapped, and hanging on their proper hooks. Marie wasn’t bothered by the wind. If something threatened to fly away in a big blow, it wasn’t the fault of the wind, just an inadequate application of baling wire and nails.

So, #1105 is dedicated to Marie. True Panhandle furniture, it will not blow away or come apart. Ten strands of baling wire bind the milk-painted top to the frame. Re-purposed pitchfork tines serve as drawer pulls. Tabletop panels are pit-fired scrap sheet metal from a salvage yard in Campo, Colorado.