Anyone know how much a Jarvi bench costs?

Making a Jarvi Bench - YouTube

The "badass" aspects of video annoy me, but that sure is a beautiful concept and piece of work.

smt

they are nice looking, if a bit generic Danish Modern.
I agree about the video- hard to be badass when running Grizzly tools...
and his taste in music is pretty bad.

my guess is 2 to 3 grand, minimum.

me, I would make it from metal- but I like metal.

like contemporary blacksmiths, a lot of woodworkers like Jarvi concentrate on tricks that really only appeal to other technicians- its an inside joke, in a way- impressive, but ultimately not as important as the design, the wood itself, the utility, and how it fits into the entire history of furniture.
american craftsmen have often fallen down this very self referential rabbit hole. they make this stuff mainly to impress themselves that they can do it.
as a technician, I care about technique- but most people could care less. I certainly fall prey to this syndrome sometimes, but think its important to put it in perspective, to go to a museum now and then and look at the entire march of history, not just focus on my own sleight of hand.

Cripes.....15 minutes of crap just for a 10 second view of the finished piece.....and it's shown up against a wall,
not from all around.
I can't tell even if there is contrasting colors like I have seen of that style on other pieces.

For sure our own Stephen Thomas would do a better job of photographing & documenting it.

....and not with a gopro camera mounted on an over caffeinated squirrel either.....

Yep he's a badass...

must be a millenial thing

The reason he's a "badass" is shown at about 4:30 - he's working in the metric system! Plus he wears a floppy cowboy hat, a universal badass symbol.

I kinda like his stuff, but then again I'm a well known wood weenie. But I have to agree with Ries, when all is said and done, esthetics and meaning will aways trump cleverness. I have a sculptor friend who bemoans the fact that the real sculptors have given up the formal for the conceptual, leaving a void that craft artists have filled. with work that is superbly made but devoid of real substance.

BTW, the only real badass furniture maker I know of is Gary Knox Bennett. Google him and check him out if you don't know of his work, especially the cabinet with the nail hammered into it. Gary was the one who coined the term "wood weenie", for the guys who asked him what kind of glue he used when he gave talks about his work.

I don't like the "Schtick" much, but I do think the one-plank Jarvi bench is a fascinating design and that it is "right". Almost as elementally as a snath is "right" for the purpose and the materials. It might be possible to take a little bit away (cut actual legs out of the splats and wide legs, possibly). But nothing needs added and one could imagine a clever person in the middle ages making them with efficiency for lightness, toughness, and strength.

Garry Knox Bennett has done a few interesting things, I've seen nothing that in my mind attains the Jarvi bench design. (For the record, there is not a lot of other Jarvi stuff that resonates for me, the bench is a different class altogether). Facts of the matter are that there were several other businesses that made the money that allowed GKB to not take woodworking (or furniture making) very seriously, or count on it for income; which paradoxically made it very lucrative for him anyway, with a certain clientele.

I believe you know him (and are represented in some of the same books as each other) and have a lot of gold plating done - has he done any of your plating in the past?

smt

stephen thomas said:

Making a Jarvi Bench - YouTube

The "badass" aspects of video annoy me, but that sure is a beautiful concept and piece of work.

smt

Click to expand...

I agree, some YouTube videos can be very distracting from what you want to see.

Be fair, the cowboy hat does go with the re-purposed cow birthing winch on his mould - former.

That video is so annoying, which is a shame, because that looks a really fast way to make a very unique table. if only he had got a better blade in his saw cut a little slower and he could have saved him self a whole mass of finish clean up.

Don't know were you get them from - if you still can, but when i was a kid and we were doing the high end wood work we use to get band-saw blades with holes in them and a more japanese like tooth form, they had little set and really did not cut fast, but the finish was near planed. Would be ideal for doing those legs.