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By Brian Caldwell, Staff Writer, Woodshop News There isn't an ounce of ego in Ed Wohl. He is aware of his many talents, but would be hard-pressed to acknowledge any of them. Wohl claims to lack ambition and said he is incredibly undisciplined. But the reality is Wohl is an excellent designer and maker of custom furniture, limited-edition furniture, and produces an impressive bread-and-butter product.
Cutting boards Wohl is known for his extensive line of bird's-eye maple cutting boards, available in galleries worldwide. What began as a single cutting board he made for his wife has grown into an ambitious production process that involves several companies and thousands of cutting boards each year.
Wohl also has a line of chopping blocks, trays, Lazy Susans and cherry bowls. He said the cutting boards have an added benefit they are a terrific way of training workers. "If you can make a cutting board, you can make a blanket chest top, a tabletop. It really is a great way of training somebody to do my woodworking, because if someone can take a board off the shelf and make a cutting board, they can make anything. They learn about shadow lines, and how to file corners, and how to do details, and what the details should be."
"We always tell them to serve on one side and cut on the other. Some customer said that to me, and it's great because it gets them over the hump. Some people hang them up and some people use them to death and then order another one. Even when they're chopped up, they look beautiful with food on them." Complicated process Making an Ed Wohl cutting board is not as simple a procedure as one might think. Wohl and his longtime employee Steve Pierick began making cutting boards in the 1980s and sold them on a limited basis at art shows. A Chicago gallery owner approached Wohl in 1990 with the idea of producing the boards on a much larger scale, but they were never able to work things out. However, Wohl found a subcontractor, Coulee Region Enterprises of Bangor, Wis., that was willing to find the wood and glue the boards together. "Although there are a million companies that glue things together, they all said no because bird's-eye maple is [difficult] to work with and every board is different. So, all the wood in any one cutting board has to come from the same stick of wood, which meant in the process they have to cut the boards up, keep them all together, and glue them together. They can do a thousand boards in a day plus they're a lumber company, so they purchase the bird's-eye from all over the place." After the boards are glued, they are shipped to another subcontractor, Routed 4 U, of Sun Prairie, Wis., where the boards are cut with a CNC router. Wohl transports the cutting boards to a 1,000-sq.-ft. shop he built near his home where they are sanded. He wanted the sanding done in a separate location, citing enough commotion in his shop without adding the sanding operation. Once sanded, the cutting boards are dipped into a mix of mineral oil, linseed oil and wax. "I don't remember when the first cutting board was made, but I do remember him discussing it as one of those smooth stones like you find in a lake," said Bill Stumpf, Wohl's close friend, award-winning furniture designer for Herman Miller Inc. of Zeeland, Mich., and president of William Stumpf & Associates of Stockholm, Wis. "I guess the beauty of that and the thing I admire about Ed is the precocious way that he started it all. I don't think he became the artist that he is out of a vogue or established way." Erdman, Stumpf, Maloof Wohl is a product of the '60s. He grew up in Cleveland and attended Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, before he joined the Peace Corps and found himself in a place he knew nothing about Pakistan. Following two years in the Peace Corps, Wohl returned to the United States and received a degree in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis. He went to work for Marshall Erdman and Associates, an architectural company in Madison, Wis., and met Stumpf. "I came up here to work and was going to leave at the end of the summer, and here I am. I'm not a planner. I'm not ambitious. I'm an incredibly undisciplined person." It wouldn't be fair to judge Wohl's work by his cutting boards alone. His custom furniture designs are the result of a perfectionist attitude he attributes to working for and with Stumpf. "Bill loves this area and he has always encouraged me to stick it out here making this stuff," said Wohl. "The thing about his chairs is, when he designs a product every piece on the product is a piece of sculpture. Every piece in anything Bill designs is beautiful. Strictly from working with Stumpf, I pay a lot of attention to detail. "I worked for him, with him, and we almost set up a company together. I also started doing some furniture, some carpentry, remodeling a bit." In 1973 Wohl took a three-week course from Sam Maloof at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, N.C., and the following summer was asked to work at Maloof's California shop. "It wasn't so much a learning experience as just a fun opportunity. I lived in his house, worked all day with Sam, and spent the evenings with his son. It was a great summer. It is remarkable to be in and around the house, to get to know him so well. It was totally wonderful." The two have slightly different approaches to furniture making. "I use calipers," Wohl said. "I want things to be 5/1000ths. Sam, he rarely uses a tape measure. He's wonderful. The beauty is the way he literally throws things together. It's not my approach at all. I'm finicky. Without my caliper I'd have to give it up." "I think the first love affair that he developed with [making furniture] had to do with going out and working for Sam Maloof," Stumpf said. "He was changed after that." Shop life Wohl has a group of part-time employees who sand the cutting boards and get paid by the piece.
Wohl said his most important asset is his wife, Ann. "We just get up in the morning and start attacking," he said. "She does all the billing, bookkeeping and invoicing, so she's on top of all this cutting board stuff. There are some days I get long hours in the shop, and other days I'm on the phone. I go off in the afternoon and play tennis." Wohl invented a sanding station specifically designed for sanding his cutting boards. There are three in his sanding facility and a fourth in his furniture shop. "The first thing we developed was a vacuum hold-down that would rotate so that you could turn with a motor, or by hand, whatever was being held down. In conjunction with a company that designs and sells filtration equipment, we figured out how many square feet of filter area we would need, and the volume of air we'd need for the type of sanding we're doing. The first ones were built out of wood, and the ones I have now are out of metal." His latest shop addition is a 7-1/2-hp, single-phase Aget Dustkop pull-through Cyclone dust collector. Other shop staples include a Halsty 36" wide-belt sander, two Northfield jointers, a Powermatic planer, and a 10" Delta 10" cabinet saw. Design
"I come up here, usually when it's quiet, and I sketch. I try to always adapt something I've made to the new thing. I sit down here and I draw and I draw. I just keep sketching until I find something I can start with. There's a real strong sense of play involved in all this." His toughest design was a commission piece for a highchair with a removable tray. Wohl undoubtedly felt some added pressure because the piece was for Stumpf. After drawing pages and pages, he drew four lines, and everything clicked. "Designer Charles Eames said you don't design things for them,' you design things for people you know or people you love," Stumpf said. "I tried to describe to Ed that I wanted to give something to my first granddaughter that she would never forget. He came up with that high chair which was just fabulous. All my grandchildren's names are carved in the underside of the seat. That chair, I'm sure, will be used by their grandchildren too." Developing a game plan Wohl and his wife have hired a business consultant to help separate the cutting board business from the furniture business. The current plan is to incorporate the cutting board business, because some day it may be sold or transferred. "Did you ever hear the phrase, Jumping over dollars to get to nickels?' I'm guilty of that," said Wohl, in reference to his lack of business prowess. "This is a good business, and to my kids, to my employees, to some outsider, old age, something it basically could be a source of income, and so we're beginning to set it up in that regard. And it will be much more efficient, too, when I do that." Wohl is searching for a building in Spring Green, Wis., where he would like to move his cutting board business, and open up a showroom for his furniture and cutting boards. Spring Green is the home of Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin home. Wohl has a relationship with Taliesin that includes hosting an annual tour of his shop for Taliesin apprentices. Like many people in Wisconsin, Wohl speaks in awe of Wright. "Frank Lloyd Wright was a master of everything, one of the great charismatic geniuses of all time. But he was like the sun, and everything else glowed around him and reflected and still lives. He was a magnetic human being." Even though he plans to move his cutting board operations to Spring Green, Wohl will maintain his furniture business in his shop on the hill, which he particularly enjoys on weekends.
"Ed is very much in control of his destiny and I've never seen him do something contrary to his goals, which have always been to be independent, to not have to work in a corporation, to work in the essence versus the attributes of things," said Stumpf. Wohl describes his business as a hobby gone crazy, but he absolutely loves what he does and has managed to stay grounded throughout his career. "There's so much luck involved. I produce nice stuff and it's been successful, and I have a lovely wife and great companions. It's a great area out here artists, craftsmen, the whole area is full of them and everybody is friendly. It's a great community." Thanks to Woodshop News for permission to reproduce this article. © 2002 Woodshop News. |
