"A Cut Above: 'Weekend Woodworker' Finds Critical Acclaim"
You don't have to build a better mousetrap to get the world to beat a
path to your door: A better Parsons table will do as well. ...
Although he's only a weekend woodworker, the quality of his work is
bringing national recognition and commercial success to Ed Moore and
the path to his garage workshop in Bowie MD is well trod.
The upward turning in his avocation came the day, more than
four years ago, when Moore dropped in to ask if a local interior
decorator could use his tables.
"He just wandered in one day
with one of his tables and I almost fainted when I saw it," said
Elizabeth Saunders, whose company has kept Moore busy since then
designing and building everything from individual tables to complete
executive office wall units.
Describing him as
"a most extraordinary craftsman," Elizabeth Interiors used two of his
tables in the redecoration of the chambers of Chief Judge Robert C.
Murphy of the Court of Appeals. It was this exposure of his work that
led to Moore's commission to create a table specially designed to hold
the original seal of the State of Maryland and a gavel originally
presented to the Court of Appeals by St. Mary's Parish in 1854.
He
is now at work on the special table, a Hepplewhite vitrine, or display
table with glass top, which will suit the era it honors, some 200 years
ago, when the Court of Appeals was founded.
"I like knowing the
sequence of how things go together," said Moore, who specializes in
Parsons tables: a clean, simple design originated in the 1930s at the
Paris division of the Parsons School of Design. But he delights in
creating such diversities as an original puzzle cube for others of a
precise turn of mind, and other small items such as cutting boards,
which are sold locally at Hugs and Kisses crafts shop on Maryland
Avenue.
Using walnut, oak and ash, Moore is continuing a
tradition of woodwork in his family; his father did woodwork and his
grandfather was known for his circular staircases.
Source: Lauraine Wagner, "A Cut Above: 'Weekend Woodworker' Finds Critical Acclaim", The Capital Annapolis MD Febraury 15, 1980, page 20
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