Most people probably don’t know Danny Kamerath. That’s likely going to change in a couple of years, maybe even a few months. It’s not as if Kamerath wants to be well known: Quite the opposite, he’s the kind of quiet, unassuming guy we’d all like to have for a buddy or a brother.
It’s an exaggeration to say he’s going to become to furniture making what Elvis was to rock ‘n’ roll or Warhol was to contemporary art. But what Kamerath makes, what he crafts, is part of what defines him. And eventually, if he continues to cobble together the chairs and tables that make a newcomer to his work gape with wonder and appreciation, he’s going to become renowned.
He’s just that good.
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His obsession started simply enough.
When Kamerath and his wife, Carol, moved into their M-Streets home in 1988, they had a dining room, but no table or chairs. Kamerath had taken an interest in wood sculpting while in college and decided he’d take a crack at making something a bit more functional.
So he set about making a set of chairs and enlisted a woman he shared office space with to help him figure out what he was doing.
“When I was trying to get proportions down and figure out how high, how wide and all those kinds of stuff, Susan would sort of lay on her side on the floor on a big piece of paper, and I’d trace her.
“That shape is Susan,” he says, indicating a handsome chair with a curvature to its high-rising back, made of Baltic birch plywood spaced with cherry dowels.
But the chair took Kamerath eight months to make. Not only was it his first piece, but he also has his day job (he’s a self-employed graphic designer) and his woodworking studio is in his attic, so he can only use his workspace about eight or nine months out of the year (during the summer months, he can work until about 10 a.m., at which time the temperature becomes unbearably hot).
“By the time I finished that chair, I just couldn’t stand the idea of making it again,” he says. “So I had some other designs, and I decided to make that chair. And then that chair and …”
What results is a dining room with seven drastically different-looking chairs. In the adjoining living room are two others (not to mention many different styles of tables). Some have sharp angles and are made of a dark wood, such as ebony; others have a fluid look to them and are made of curly maple. Still others have an art-deco feel to them and combine dark and light woods.
And they all have different names — Mary, Charlie, Carol, Jim, Steve — because Kamerath either fashions them after friends of his or they remind him of someone once they’re complete. One very free-form looking chair is named Robert.
“Robert is Robert. He’s an illustrator,” Kamerath says. “He’s one of my oldest, dearest friends, and he’s just a real comfortable, easygoing, funky guy.”
Though they all look different, one of the things that all of the chairs and other furniture Kamerath makes have in common is, though they might look like art pieces, they’re meant to be used.
“They’re really just furniture,” he says. “A lot of times, people come over to look at them, and they’ll just kind of walk around them and touch them and stuff. My feelings are hurt when they leave if they haven’t sat in any chairs.”
In fact, though they may look too beautiful or fragile to plunk down in, they are amazingly solid and comfortable. Until recently, Kamerath used a neighbor whom he calls “200-plus pounds of Texas ” to test the chairs’ stability.
When it comes to crafting furniture, Kamerath admits that chairs are his first love. He says they often invoke a powerful reaction from people.
“People get really funny about chairs, and I never understood that until about a year a half ago,” he says. “I took a friend up to Oklahoma City to run a marathon. They had the memorial from the bombing that had been recently completed. It’s a really stunning memorial: There’s a big reflecting pool with a couple of columns, and a little lawn …
“And you walk into that space, and there are 168 empty chairs there. It’s so powerful. You know what those chairs mean, what they represent. When I saw that, I understood why people are nuts about chairs, why they have such a reaction to chairs like they do.”
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A visit to Kamerath’s home and studio brings forth a reaction of oooohs and ahhhhs. But he maintains his creations are nothing more than furniture.
“I like them, and I think they’re good craft, but they’re not art,” he says. “I have a real narrow definition of art. I think artists change the way we look at stuff. I think Picasso was an artist; he changed the way we looked at painting. I think Bob Dylan is an artist; he changed the way we look a music.”
Suggest that Kamerath might have changed the way you look at furniture, and he sort of grins and looks at you like you might be a bit off your rocker, so to speak.
Ok, so maybe they’re not art, but they’re not just furniture either.
For instance, there’s the time he devotes to his craft. Even if Kamerath gets his wish of a backyard studio in which to begin making and marketing his furniture full-time (he expects prices will be in the range of $2,500-$10,000), he still won’t be cranking these chairs out in some kind of assembly line.
They sometimes take years to see through to completion. The one called Mary took him four years to design and involved more than 100 hours worth of sanding.
All of Kamerath’s work arrives at its final luster through sanding (he sometimes uses 2,000-grit sandpaper, which is one of the finest grades available and feels almost like velvet to the touch). He uses no stains (“If I want an orange chair, I find an orange wood”) and, if he puts a finishing touch on them at all, he’ll use either just oil or a “special concoction” of oil and urethane. And he doesn’t use any hardware.
“There are no nails or screws in any of my furniture. I’m a real fascist about that,” he says.
Many of the woods Kamerath employs also are quite rare. There are the old standards — mahogany, maple, cherry — but he also uses Wenge and Purple Heart (African woods), Bocote and Cocobolo (both from ) and Goncalo Alves (Indonesian).
Just the subject of wood can turn the normally soft-spoken man suddenly passionate.
“I love wood. I love the way it feels when I’m working on it; I love the way it sands. I love that every time you make a cut, it’s a surprise,” Kamerath says. “There’s going to be some surprise grain, some kind of surprise texture that shows up. I think wood is just magical … you cut down a tree, cut it up and all the sudden there’s cool stuff inside.”
