Synopsis: With David Lamb’s Zimmer desk as inspiration, Dan Strout determined to interchange a factory-built desk in his lounge—the one piece within the room he had not made himself. After finishing the piece, Strout wanted to color it, however he was at a loss over how to take action in a method that match the piece. He contacted Lamb, who put him in contact with Mark Adams, who had accomplished the portray on Lamb’s Zimmer desk.
It’s typically onerous to hint the inspiration for a chunk you construct; different instances, it’s not so onerous. David Lamb first got here to my consideration as a result of he’s such an achieved furnishings maker. I had examine him in Effective Woodworking, admired his work tremendously, and knew that he was the 2021 recipient of the Cartouche Award, given by the Society of American Interval Furnishings Makers. (As chances are you’ll know, the Cartouche Award is to furnishings making because the Stanley Cup is to hockey.)
However it wasn’t furnishings alone that had me pulling into his driveway one chilly winter day a number of years in the past. I had found that David and his spouse additionally make and promote maple syrup from a small sugar shack beside his store in rural New Hampshire. And it occurs that my spouse, who’s a local Vermonter with a hardwired penchant for pure maple syrup, will journey wherever to purchase a trunkful of the stuff. Me? I’m an novice furnishings maker who loves his spouse, finely crafted furnishings, and—you guessed it maple syrup. You see the place that is going: An impromptu day journey was afoot, from our home close to Boston to central New Hampshire.
We met David below the roof of his sugar shack as he stoked a crackling hearth that was boiling a vat of freshly tapped maple sap. Pleasantries have been exchanged, idle chatter ensued, syrup purchases have been made, and the inevitable matter of furnishings making adopted.
Again at house later that very same day, after packing away our new stockpile of syrup, I went to David’s web site and noticed for the primary time his superbly crafted Zimmer desk. This beautiful piece—a nod to a Seventeenth-century European desk—is round in kind with intricate pierced acanthus carvings accentuated by deliberately aged paint with delicate shade shifts.
The Zimmer desk resulted from a collaboration between David and his longtime good friend Mark Adams—a extremely revered furnishings conservator. David constructed the piece, and Mark expertly utilized the paint to copy 400 years of damage. As quickly as I noticed it, I knew there was a future venture for me with this piece because the catalyst—however what wouldn’t it be? For over a yr the Zimmer desk, with its stunning strains, carvings, and aged end, percolated at the back of my mind.
After which my focus fell on a sure late-1940’s factory-built Duncan Phyfe–model card desk that had been sitting entrance and heart in our lounge for practically twenty years. This desk, which incorporates a high that pivots 90° to a tough cease and hinges open like a e book to double its floor space, had been a stalwart presenter of food and drinks for numerous (usually momentous) events with household and pals.
Though cherished, it was worn, a bit rickety and—most significantly—the one piece of furnishings within the room that I didn’t make. My spouse beloved that factory-made desk and vowed to not change it except its successor was actually notable. Once I insisted on constructing a alternative desk, my spouse’s situation was that it, too, will need to have a “spinning” high. I agreed, and the thought of a Zimmer desk–impressed venture emerged from its cranial slumber.
By means of numerous sketches, a workable idea slowly emerged using the distinct styling cues of David’s masterful piece together with a lot of my very own. I started to construct. A number of months handed, and the ever-present desk in my small store was practically full. However it was unpainted. What had I accomplished? I knew nothing about methods to paint in a method that may correctly showcase this piece. So I e-mailed David, attaching a photograph of the starkly unfinished desk and asking for his recommendation.
David encouragingly replied, “Wow! You’re digging deep with this venture,” after which supplied me Mark’s cellphone quantity. Mark, I shortly realized, has a wealth of furnishings conservation and ending experiences and interesting tales to accompany them. I listened and discovered. It was in mid-February 2025, on one other chilly, grey morning very like the one once I first met David that our beloved however drained Duncan Phyfe–model card desk discovered a brand new spot in our house and its proudly made alternative assumed its new place. Though it was a day crammed with combined feelings, as life’s small modifications can typically be, it was an excellent day.
Dan Strout builds interval furnishings within the store behind his house in Milton, Mass.
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