The first time I got a chance to really talk to Cassandra Taylor, she was sitting in her garage with the door open. She had a knife in her hand; it had a thick blade with mean serrations along the sharp side and came to a pointed tip. She was stripping a piece of wood that she told me she’d found in the woods behind her house. She is a compact lady, not fat, but solidly built. She is a very nice woman and enjoys conversation. She was in her thirties when we met by chance at the unfinished furniture store in northern Ladoga that was the obscure meeting place of woodcrafter’s from the area. Cassandra’s father helped to make a name for woodcraft in town and sold a lot of his work in the store that was a prize for connoisseurs in surrounding towns and she had grown up with the man, shadowing his every move. He was a master engraver and he could carve anything into any piece of furniture and would only charge a hundred dollars more for the custom design; a skill he put to use in stone when Cassandra’s mother died suddenly from an aneurysm. His work on his wife’s tombstone is beautiful, not too busy, but replete with iris flowers that she loved more than any other. The way he tapered the depth of the engraving to shade the petals is astounding and the work is a masterpiece tucked into the heart of the North Ladoga cemetery. Cassandra learned to handle a knife at an early age and it was clear that she was a natural. She learned to build furniture as well and met her husband at the unfinished furniture store when both were selling their work for the first time. Her husband builds big pieces; wardrobes, bookshelves, dressers, and together they carried on her father’s tradition of very meticulous work that ascended to masterpiece.
In her garage, she invited me to sit with her and as we talked she continued to strip the wood. I asked her if she considered herself an artist or just a furniture maker. She said, “I make furniture and I like for it to look good. I don’t know what being an artist is, I guess. If it means that you make something to look nice then I guess that’s what I am.” She explained that she was working on foot stools for Lorenzo Button, the man who owns Northside Cutz, a barber shop located in the northeast that caters to black male patrons. I went to high school with Button and he used to make good money even then cutting hair. He’d commissioned Cassandra to make totem style footrests for the chairs in his shop; Button claims to have Native American heritage but his only evidence of it is his hair. Cassandra planned to do a dragonfly, a cardinal, a hornet, a bat, and a goose, animals with wings that you could see in Ladoga. She showed me her sketches that the barber was very happy with and I could see why. The sketches showed influences of Native American iconography with a graffiti tone, playful but austere. It wasn’t long before I was able to make out that she was working on the hornet; once she’d finished stripping the bark, she started to flick away chunks of the wood to reveal the rough structure of the wings, the body, the stinger.
She’d been working on the stools for a week and she’d chosen to roughly complete all five and would go back to polish them smooth before applying paint. It was cool to watch her turn the lump of wood into something with just a knife and I asked her how difficult it was. “Practice makes perfect, or almost perfect.” She gripped the knife high on the handle and the way she held it, I worried that she might cut herself. When she noticed the worry on my face she said, “I cut myself so many times,” and showed me the scars on her hands, the rough patches on her wrist from grinding wood into her skin while holding it in place during her work. I asked her why she didn’t use gloves and she said it slowed her down. “It’s easier when the knife is a part of your hand.”
Cassandra only sold her work, she had no other job. Her husband was drinking more than he use to and building much less, so the work of providing for the family mostly fell on her. She had twins, a boy and a girl, and she hated that she was on welfare and that her kids were embarrassed to wear the clothes from thrift stores she could afford. “But,” she said, “I know my children are proud of what I do. They’re my biggest fans. I could do something else, but I don’t have many options. I barely finished high school, the only place I ever worked for anybody else was at the furniture store and that was for my daddy.” She had faith in her husband and that in their future they would see things turn around. She told me that a secret part of her wanted to dream that someday the right person would see her work and it’d be smooth sailing from there. She just had to keep doing it, until she made something like her mother’s tombstone. “I have to do something that great and then somebody has to see it, so I never turn anything down. I’ll make anything I can do by myself, and pretty soon everybody will want what I do and I won’t have to struggle anymore.”
The difficult thing about selling furniture is the invasion of retailers who mass produce pieces that will always be cheaper than handmade. Furniture makers in the area can make a living, though, but as Cassandra pointed out, it’s important that people in the market for high end, custom pieces are aware that your work exists.
By the time we were done talking, the foot stool looked good enough to buy, I even offered. And Cassandra’s hands were bloody where calluses had erupted on her palms. She wrapped both in bandanas and I helped her tie them.
“I’ll heal up soon enough, get back to it. Pretty soon I’ll have hands like my daddy’s, tough like leather. If they don’t fall off first.”
I told my girlfriend about Cassandra and showed her pictures of the stool she had been working on in the garage. She asked that I commission her for a piece for our living room and we sat on the couch trying to decide what we could possibly need. “What about a bookshelf,” Mary suggested. She was studying to become a teacher and had acquired a lot of books since she stopped working after the birth of our son.
“Yea,” I said, “but we should get her to do something that showcases her talent. What can she do to a bookshelf?”
“Ask her.”
So I did. I went to Cassandra’s house the next day and explained to her what Mary and I were thinking about it. She had ideas and suggested that we consider an entire entertainment unit that could house our tv, movies, music, and books. She had been playing around with the idea of creating an extensive system specifically for people who lived in apartments. “I’m still working it out, but I want it to be collapsible so when you move, it won’t be a hassle. When I say collapsible, I mean, no tools necessary to take it down and rebuild. But it’s tricky. It has to be sturdy, you don’t want to bump into it and it collapse with all your stuff in it.” She showed me a miniature that she had in her garage and she thought the key was to reinforce it once it was standing. “I’m gonna build you a big one, flatten it out, and then walk you through what to do once you have it in your house. I’ll just charge you for the materials since it’s still an experiment, but you can’t sue me if it collapses in your living room.” We shook on it.
She built it much faster than I thought she would. She called me about a month after our handshake and I met her at her garage. She was working the totem stools over with sand paper and took off her gloves to shake my hand as I approached. She had me help her lift what looked to be a stack of wooden boards that were heavier than I’d expected them to be and we positioned the stack in the driveway. Cassandra opened the stack from the middle and both sides lay flat on the ground in three connected sections. I helped her pull the top board of each section straight up and as we lifted, she inserted small wooden pegs that helped the boards form shelves of various dimensions. By the time we were done, it was a five foot unit where all of the entertainment in my apartment could be housed. As we collapsed it, Cassandra reviewed the bracing procedures but said that she’d be happy to help me move it in and set it up.
“I’m gonna take more time before I give it to you to make it look nice. You got any specific ideas for what you want me to do to it?” I told her that I trusted her to do whatever she wanted.
Even though it was a hassle to get her to take anymore money, I was happy to pay Cassandra more, plus Mary insisted when we finally set it up in our living room. It is very impressive. The finished product has sleek ornamentation that traces its edges, three lines of diminishing thickness that form a border along the outside and inside the shelves. It’s varnished to a dark brown that matches the floors of the apartment.
I like Cassandra and I appreciate the work that she did for me. I stopped by Northside Cutz for a shave recently and to admire the finished footstools. Cassandra has an eye for color and they were remarkable. Button felt the same, “People have to know about that woman. She’s a genius.” And we both resolved to send her as much business as we could.
PRL Serials 