ARTISANS: Strong to the Finish

 

"Got the sweet smell of lacquer down here,” Jeff Homeyer muses as he descends into the basement work area of his home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Stacks of wood and various tools surround a spotlighted worktable, where a hefty slab of wood reflects the lamp above it. A close look at the wood, soon to be an ornate tabletop, reveals a marbled pattern, symmetrical and formed into a flower-like circle, whose detail Homeyer accentuates by spraying it with water. Running his hand along the now glistening surface, he explains that the varnish will bring out the natural patterns and hues of the wood the way the water does, but permanently. “The first coat,” he says, “reveals the piece.”

 

The wood veneer for the tabletop on which he’s currently working is from maple burl, a large bulbous growth that produces an elaborately curled wood-grain pattern—something that, from the outside of a tree or when trying to make a solid piece of furniture, may be a nuisance, but when used for marquetry makes a stunning focal point.

 

Homeyer’s artistic eye developed naturally, but careful study of the practice of marquetry and inlay work honed his ability to make elegant pieces of furniture as strong as their delicate details are beautiful. Only twenty-seven now, Homeyer first came to woodworking when he was just fourteen, through his father’s eponymous Great Barrington construction company; he helped out with many aspects of the trade, from heavy machinery and rough carpentry to the finishing touches called fine carpentry. Now, thirteen years later, his dad, Brian, says “I learned more from him than he learned from me.”

 

Homeyer gravitated very quickly toward fine carpentry, which requires careful attention to detail. And it seemed to come naturally to him. “He focuses on the thing he’s doing, until it’s exactly what it needs to be,” the elder Homeyer says.

 

When he was eighteen, Jeff Homeyer crafted his first jewelry box, a distinct detour from the rough, structure-oriented work he had been doing. Using scrap wood left over from a construction job, Homeyer built a box complete with secret compartments. From there he developed his boxes, making each more ornate, then began to make furniture, playing with various types of wood to create patterns of natural tones.

The carpentry skills he learned from his father allow him to create extremely sturdy pieces. “You can tell a carpenter’s dovetails from a furniture-maker’s,” Homeyer explains. “A timber-frame house is really like a giant piece of furniture,” in that multiple sections come together to make the whole.

 

Now, with a set of finely tuned carpentry skills and his innate artistic eye, Homeyer creates strong, majestic furniture, dotted with checkerboard woodgrain patterns or delicate flowers, each design made from natural wood, polished to bring out its rich colors.

 

While flipping through a book one day, Homeyer discovered a small black-and-white picture of a self-portrait by famous Italian intarsiatori (wood inlayer) Antonio Barili. Crafted entirely of carefully cut wood pieces, the intricate figure was made in 1502 and had since been destroyed during World War II. Despite only having the small picture from which to work, Homeyer decided to re-create it himself.

 

“This is the masterpiece,” he says, looking proudly at the large wood replica that took him two years to complete, which depicts Barili bent over his work below a bird in a blossoming tree.
Homeyer selected his own wood for this piece, and, despite the rainbow of colors ranging from olive-hued leaves to pearly white blossoms to deep chestnut eyes, nothing is stained; instead, the myriad natural woods are accentuated by clear varnish to enhance their own vibrant colors. “It amazes me how he fits everything together so perfectly,” his father says. In the place on the image where Barili inscribed his name, Homeyer replaced his, so the inscription reads: “This work Jeff Homeyer made with the knife not the brush.”

 

Before he began working with wood, Homeyer did oil paintings. “Once he started to work in wood and building, he basically just changed the medium,” his father says. Homeyer begins each piece with a sketch, which might take days of reworking to perfect the design. He then pieces his design together carefully in wood, like a puzzle, and while he will sometimes stray from his original sketches, he tries to follow his plan as closely as possible. Each piece relies on all of the others, after all.

 

From bookcases and solid end tables to artful picture frames and elegant jewelry boxes, Homeyer seems to make it all. He uses two methods when adorning these works, each incorporating an encyclopedic array of woods as if they were paints on a palette. Inlay involves cutting one piece of wood to fit into another to form a pattern that is simultaneously part of the structure; marquetry, Homeyer’s specialty, uses veneers, which are assembled and glued into mosaic-like designs on a carved, sunken surface. Veneers are sliced thinly from solid logs, a process that produces near-identical pieces because the slices are so close together (most are only a twenty-fourth of an inch thick).

 

Sorting through a box nearby, Homeyer pulls out an assortment of veneers from past projects, including the olive-colored wood from his Antonio Barili replica, which still shows the clean-cut holes where the leaves were cut from the mineral-stained poplar. He sources most of his veneers from Berkshire Veneer in Great Barrington, which stocks thousands from around the world. As he holds another stack of veneers, Homeyer rattles off the types of wood and the origin of certain designs, be it a natural growth like burl or a mineral stain that seeped into the tree. All of these might be viewed as imperfections by some, but for an artist like Homeyer, they represent a full rainbow of color.

 

Oh, what could I possibly tell you, other than ‘He’s brilliant’?” asks Connie Friedrich, a retired teacher and close friend of the Homeyer family. Friedrich met Homeyer when she hired Homeyer Construction to renovate her kitchen several years ago. Homeyer had admired and studied an inlaid end table of hers that had gone unnoticed by many of her family members; the artist, she says, has an innate sense of perception far beyond his years.

 

As pieces like Friedrich’s end table or the original Barili portrait show, marquetry and inlay are art forms with an ancient history. Homeyer discovered the delicate artistry and applied his carpentry skills in a way that celebrates the timeworn craft with a modern touch. “I just have a need to create things,” Homeyer says, adding that he never fashions the same design twice. As he casually explains his process and shows off museum-worthy pieces, his easygoing nature does not seem to reflect his intense focus, but it’s clear that his open-minded creativity guides his designs. Striking a balance between originality and practicality, Homeyer creates his artful furniture in precise and sturdy form.

 

Even when using his carpentry skills for elegant and traditional touches that will probably go unnoticed, like blind-dovetailed corners for extra strength, Homeyer is painstakingly detailed. “You do a whole lot of work that no one can ever appreciate,” he says with a shrug. Instead it’s on the surface of his work that Homeyer’s true talent shines, glimmering like the freshly varnished veneers he so carefully arranges. [Jan/Feb 2010]

Alison McGee is assistant editor of Berkshire Living.

 

THE GOODS

Homeyer Woodcraft

Great Barrington, Mass.

www.homeyerwoodcraft.com

 

Berkshire Veneer

29 Locust Hill Rd.

Great Barrington, Mass.

www.berkshireveneer.com