tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19245213575413025312011-04-21T10:40:53.029-07:00A website about my brother's turned wooden bowls, the Hudson Valley, and random musings about life in general.Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.comBlogger241100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-34430713345705582082008-08-10T09:24:00.000-07:002008-08-10T09:50:42.512-07:00

My Grandpa Hahn built this house from a 1937 Popular Mechanics design ("Build your Daughter This Dream House!"). Kind of ironic, considering it was the midst of the Depression, and a swanky art moderne dollhouse was about as close as they were ever going to get to a dream, but this was the result. Dee is the little girl with her head turned away, and her brother Ron, my father, is the little boy.

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-90629121323505667582008-08-10T09:21:00.000-07:002008-08-10T09:24:19.964-07:00

What a slug I am! No new posts since February--Hal's off chainsawing a one man tea party out there and it's mid August! In the not so funny news category, alas, the Woodman dropped a log on his foot earlier this spring, resulting in a crush injury to the third metatarsal. Should have been healed by now, blah blah. Not easy when your job involves climbing trees!He wasn't able to do much wood

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-49607081801970130652008-02-11T16:01:00.000-08:002008-02-12T20:58:16.597-08:00

They had the annual ice carving contest in downtown Kingston the other day and Nancy Donskoj sent me these photos of Hal's contributions from last year (ice tea--get it?) . I'll do this year's in the next post....

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-12332536691296211552008-02-02T06:36:00.000-08:002008-02-02T07:23:46.252-08:00

I love Shoshana Snow's ceramics. I got on etsy originally to try to help my brother, but I ended up being a consumer of etsy goodies. Even now, when my credit card should be in the freezer in a plastic bag, stuck to a bag of frozen peas or otherwise hard to find, hard to use...I am lusting after THINGS.Fortunately, etsy offers many THINGS, and even just looking makes me happy--I've bookmarked a

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-2924117180076765972007-12-04T18:01:00.000-08:002007-12-16T07:35:34.537-08:00

So Hal and I made it out to Austin Thomas's Etsy show at Pocket Utopia in Bushwick, aka East Williamsburg, this Sunday (in the first little snowfall of the year). Hal, in classic Hal fashion, pulled this sassafrass bowl he was working on out of his backpack (they take around a year to finish curing--he never knows if a bowl will survive or crack while drying) and after we made the subway trip

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-22819139584842925702007-11-30T19:17:00.000-08:002007-12-02T11:20:54.945-08:00

Hal has been invited to be in a group show for December at Pocket Utopia in Bushwick (aka, East Williamsburg). The show goes up 12/2 and we will be there!He brought down some things I hadn't seen in a year. I'd forgotten the scale--the hemlock platter was larger than I remembered, the yew bowl was tiny. The hemlock bowl was a million times better than this picture, the space-ship-y thing was huge

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-90010759627646776272007-10-03T20:04:00.000-07:002007-10-20T19:15:40.671-07:00

Here, in the shameless brother-promotion department, is what I saw on Etsy a few days ago. They had a contest to produce 20 user-curated posters of the best things on Etsy. There were a thousand entries, of which sixty were chosen (they couldn't stop at 20!). Each has sixteen products, so that's a fair amount, but out of the these were, as they said in announcing the winners, the best of the best

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-48144933525393287822007-08-29T16:33:00.000-07:002007-10-25T14:44:18.921-07:00

I saw this at my uncle's house when I visited in the spring. I was intrigued and asked him what he knew about it--not much, just that his mother, my maternal grandmother thought it came from her father's side of the family--the Klingensmiths. Her Pennsylvania grandfather had been in the Civil War, but it looked to me like it was even older than that, so I googled my way around and it turns out

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-31678418513576278452007-08-04T16:25:00.000-07:002007-08-27T12:34:08.288-07:00

When we were kids, the whole house was ours. This may not sound like much, but since we came from a tract house in California, a house in Kingston with a BASEMENT, a SUN ROOM, TWO FIREPLACES (one in the formal dining room, one in the sun room--and oh, that one? It was a huge stone one), a formal dining room with a chandelier...where my mother died, one night in 1972. So...sorry if I sounded like

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-28173192782153080792007-06-24T16:18:00.000-07:002007-08-03T17:35:43.026-07:00

Hal lives in a house across the street from where we grew up, in Kingston. The owner of the house I (we) used to live in is the president of the Hudson Valley Maritime Museum, and I haven't met him, but I hope he likes it. Here's what I liked about it: it's a Dutch Colonial revival style, built in 1928, from a design in a magazine (might have been Popular Mechanics--my brother Hal says it was "

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-66223603452643080252007-04-20T14:50:00.000-07:002007-04-20T19:03:11.936-07:00

I loved this piece so much I tried (several times) to buy it from Hal. It's hand-turned Black Locust, about 10 inches across and 8 inches high. My friend Sumo thought it had too much shellac on it, which I think he slathered on because the wood would split as it dried (my husband just added that he, too, thinks it's too new looking--he doesn't like that turned thing on top--"too manufactured--I

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-89283713118184570702007-03-11T11:27:00.000-07:002007-03-11T11:45:08.917-07:00

My photo doesn't really show this well. The more dramatic side is the one with the elongated spiraling rift, that spotlights the utter strangeness of a wooden bowl that shouldn't quite be. If it's a bowl, it's more the idea of a bowl--if it's a world, it's barely held together, more by imagination than reality, centrifugal force keeping it from splitting away completely, whirling off into the

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-55755909827886963252007-03-08T16:47:00.000-08:002007-03-08T18:34:25.023-08:00

Going from my weekend in the rain on a tugboat back to my brother's bowls, the ostensible reason for this site, I call this one "Saturn," for its [vaguely gnawed-on] planetoid aspect. It's the one that sold to one of his treework customers the night of the show, which was nice for Hal.He's contemplating what he can make right now, which is hard if you're Hal. Georgi Donskoj had suggested that he

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-66798867201595512902007-03-07T19:21:00.000-08:002007-03-07T19:59:43.618-08:00

It rained like hell the whole next day. Oh, did it rain. It let up in places, but basically, it rained so hard in the morning that when R and I were off the tug in the afternoon, the Rondout flooded and we couldn't get back till the tide went down again. And when might that be, I gently enquired of R around 5ish, when we were sitting down by the old Freeman building and watching the water still

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-90424150338262493202007-03-06T20:47:00.000-08:002007-03-07T20:04:10.337-08:00

This is from Shaun O' Boyle's Modern Ruins website, from the Boatyard Project. Twenty or so years ago, he and a friend photographed the tugs rusting away off Staten Island. They went back a year or two ago, and most of what they had documented--disappearing then--was gone.I've always been drawn to old things--when I first came to New York: the cast iron architecture of Soho and Tribeca, the fact

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-11220800287293835852007-03-04T09:06:00.000-08:002007-03-07T05:13:12.062-08:00

"Chain-sawed Windsor chair." Several words you never thought you would hear together in a sentence. "Hal," I asked, "Why a chainsaw? Why a Windsor chair?" Chain-sawed anything--it sounded like something out of Appalachia. But then he drove down to the city with a box of bowls he was leaving me to try to sell, and he plunked this little chair right down right there on the curb. Great, I thought.

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-54636764153907923212007-02-26T17:42:00.000-08:002007-02-26T18:04:40.438-08:00

Hal called. "That one you call the hubcap is HEMLOCK, not yew." But then I would have to get rid of that "Yew dooo something to me..." title, and offhand, what's to say about hemlock that doesn't involve killing Socrates or some suicide society, circa 1989?So, OK, another excuse to post a picture of the hubcap, with its silken grain (it's big--did I mention that? About 20 inches across, and

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-59681144012033528432007-02-25T14:19:00.000-08:002007-02-25T14:32:00.929-08:00

This is the little butternut bowl my friend bought for her friend (?), who did not say anything (it's also second on the left in that picture on the upper right where it says TURN TURN TURN). Tell me the truth: does it look like a salad bowl that cost two bucks at IKEA? Was she a total freak to give it as a wedding present? People are funny. Maybe the friend loved it and just ran out of time to

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-9438358497942747082007-02-25T10:40:00.000-08:002007-10-14T13:40:39.510-07:00

Hal had been working as a treecutter for a few years when he and I took a short vacation together in 1996. We went to Assateague, an island off the Maryland Shore, where an old friend, Sis, was working for the month on the beach. Sis was actually Hal's teacher, a long time ago, and although I hadn't seen her in years, she and Hal had remained friends. So she invited us down to spend a few days

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-13021001502831780052007-02-25T09:21:00.000-08:002007-03-07T17:21:00.387-08:00

I used to refer to this one as "tiny world," but I see I already called another one "exploding world." But things made of wood really are their own little worlds, aren't they? They have the history of all that happened in the years they were alive, they still have a remarkable warmth ever after, and this one is....well, to me, anyway, it's its own little world. First, it's REALLY little, maybe 4

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-7425004462605677032007-02-10T09:32:00.000-08:002007-02-26T17:04:43.135-08:00

My husband, Scott, says this one looks like a hubcap, or a flying saucer. It's huge--about 30 inches across. It didn't sell at the first show (Hal wanted $400 for it) but it will one of these days. It's yew (I'm going to let him come in here at some point and 'splain these woods better than I can--I just like saying "yew").It reminds me of a large decorative bronze platter (?) that my father got

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-82162921351680036992007-02-07T14:48:00.000-08:002007-02-09T19:00:14.772-08:00

There's a website I stumbled onto while following Shaun O'Boyle's favorite links--it's part of the Hudson Valley Ruins site, specifically, Tom Rinaldi's photos of Kingston. I remember the old Town Hall. The new one was this sort of Jack in the Box fast foody thing plunked down in the bombed out post-urban renewal parking lot that was downtown Kingston, circa 1969. The Old Town Hall, now finally

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-10362962925739260302007-02-07T10:14:00.000-08:002007-02-25T14:35:31.473-08:00

So. I stared at the bowls and platters and Hal's two CHAIN SAWED chairs (the one to the left is carved out of one piece of red oak and is about three feet high) for a few weeks wondering I could sell them...and him, as outsider art. I went to last year's Outsider Art show at the Puck building, got the booklet of galleries, and feebly started making calls. Are you accepting new work, I enquired of

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1924521357541302531.post-19233869497356927842007-02-07T09:35:00.000-08:002007-02-07T15:08:18.747-08:00

A year ago my brother Hal asked me to find a gallery in New York that would show his work.I, who could not sell Girl Scout cookies to save my life.Hal lives in Kingston, a few hours north of New York City. He cuts trees, hence the wood. He's been taking woodcarving classes for years and had recently gotten a decent lathe, so he could work on it on his own instead of going to his instructor's shop

Carolyn Hahn, OTRnoreply@blogger.com0