Meet the artist

I have been doing woodworking for more than 40 years.  I made my first piece of furniture at age 14.  My first job at age 15 was working in the summer for a master builder of some of the finest and most expensive houses in Atlanta, Georgia.  He gave me the privilege of working a week or two with each of the various crews that made up the crafts of building a fine house.  I began to hone my skills from everything from framing carpentry, finish carpentry, masonry, plumbing and electrical by working alongside master craftspeople, observing and assisting them in their work.

When I was 16 my full time summer job (and school year weekends) was for a local cabinet shop. We built everything from custom cabinetry for kitchens and bathrooms for homes to commercial fixtures for businesses.  I remember especially meeting Cecil Day, who was the founder and owner of Days Inns.  The first hotel he built was in Atlanta.  We got the contract to build and install the fixtures for his first restaurant associated with his hotels.  After that we got the contract to make the cabinets and fixtures for his hotels that were springing up throughout the Southeast.

Later, as a graduate school student in Louisville, Kentucky I worked on the school’s maintenance crew. Our tasks included repairing, restoring and reproducing the doors, windows and cornice work of the Georgian Style Architecture of the campus buildings.  I also worked on repairing and restoring some of the antique furniture.  This was an invaluable experience which developed my appreciation and a lifelong love for the intricacies of the finest woodworking of master crafts people.

Later while still in graduate school I started my own business restoring precious antiques.  I did everything from stripping old finishes, repairing broken furniture, reproducing parts and pieces that had been damaged or missing and finishing these works to last at least another century.  I also had the rare experience of getting a contract to build limited edition reproductions of antique furniture.

One of my clients, who served on the board of directors for the restoration and furnishing of the Kentucky Governor’s Mansion, appointed me to serve as an advisor and consultant for the restoration of the mansion.  This also gave me the opportunity to select and restore some of the antiquities that would furnish the Governor’s Mansion.

While in graduate school I was first introduced to the Hammered Dulcimer in a grand fashion.  There was a choir of 30 dulcimers and musicians from Scotland that played a concert in our chapel.  It was an experience that I would never forget.  I would characterize the sound in the perfect natural acoustics of the chapel as ethereal.  Each instrument has its own unique voice and natural sustain.  That experience caused me to fall in love with the instrument.  I decided that day that one day I would put it on my to-do list to make these instruments.

During the winter months when my business would fall off I traveled throughout the Ohio Valley and Appalachian countryside of eastern Kentucky in search of antique furniture that I could restore and refinish to sell to antique dealers and private individuals.  I spent countless hours sitting in rocking chairs on porches chatting with farmers, often drinking their family recipes of distilled spirits and gaining their trust, which often led to them telling about old pieces of furniture that they had discarded to barns and chicken houses.  I would scrounge through these dilapidated structures to find pieces of furniture that often were not much more than piles of lumber.   I found some rare treasures in this manner.  I also was exposed to Appalachian musical instruments and folk music, most particularly the Mountain Dulcimer.  I got to hear private recitals of these instruments as the folks of whom I made friends played and sang for me. 

My next door neighbor and landlord, who grew up in a mountain cove community of Pike County, Kentucky introduced me to his Appalachian culture.  He had a collection of recordings of music from the small mountain community where he was raised.  These recordings dated back as early as the 1930’s.  Hearing these recordings inspired me to the rich traditions of Appalachian Folk Music and the homemade instruments from which these songs were accompanied.  Some of the instruments sounded eerily like bagpipes that harken back to their ancient tradition in the British Isles.

In 1990 I returned to Georgia, my native state, after having lived and worked in Louisville, Kentucky, Huntsville Alabama, Anderson County, Tennessee and Buffalo, New York.  In each of these regions I enjoyed getting to know the local cultures and traditions and building a lasting relationship with many of the people in each place.

In the tiny hamlet I lived in Tennessee I developed some deep abiding friendships with folks whose ancestors had come to the foothills and mountains of Tennessee back in the mid-1700’s.  They were the first frontiers people who had settled in the region and eked out a living by clearing and farming the land and passing it down through many generations.  I learned the unique traditions of these Appalachian people, who through oral tradition kept the stories, music and mountain ways and crafts of their ancestors.

I got to know John Rice Irwin who established the Museum of Appalachia there, which is a model village of Tennessee frontier Appalachia.  They hosted several events each year with old time crafts people demonstrating everything from making sorghum to basket weaving.  Another famous person who had a home close by was Alex Haley, the author of Roots.  He and John Irwin were close friends and I was introduced to him through John.  I spent numerous afternoons sitting in rocking chairs on Alex’s front porch peering down the valley and listening to his amazing stories.

I led several mission building projects in Cumberland County, Tennessee near Crossville.  We built houses, did restoration and repair, adding electricity and plumbing to old log houses and crude shacks in impoverished little mountain communities.  There are two projects that I readily remember. 

The first is work we did on a church building which was also a school house.  This building had originally been built shortly after the American Revolution.  It sat on a piece of land that was part of a land grant to the ancestors of the people who still live in that mountain cove.  These were grants for their service in the Revolution.  This old building sat in a flood plain of a nearby river.  It had been flooded countless times.  It sat on crude stacks of stones for structural supports.  The ground under these stone piers had eroded over the years with the rise and recession of flood waters.  What was particularly remarkable is this 60 foot long building rested upon structural beams made of single trees that spanned the total length of the building. These beams were made of the heartwood of virgin Yellow Pine trees and hewed by hand with adze and draw planes.  Despite their exposure to yearly floods these beams were by in large still rock hard and sound.

Alongside the people of this little hamlet we jacked the building up and scabbed in sections of timbers that had rotted with new timbers we made from Yellow Pine logs, cutting them with a portable swing saw mill.  After making these repairs we leveled the building and replaced the stack stone piers with concrete.  The split Oak shingles needed numerous repairs.  One of the residents whose family had been making split White Oak roofs since this community was established,  made the shingles for us with the old tools that had been passed on to him for many generations.  I remember how proud the people were to have restored with their own hands this long cherished church building.

The second project that sticks in my memory was for a woman named Lily.  She was 98 years old  and had lived in this same community all of her life.  She was lean, stringy and fit as a fiddle.  I could not help but notice when she shook my hand how thick her fingers were and how calloused were her hands.  She told me that her late husband and she had built this four room house on 12 foot high stiles with the timber on their land.  They had built it with their own hands with tools they had made.  They had raised eight children there and she had been widowed for thirty years.  The house was built on stilts because the river a little less than a quarter mile away flooded every year.  To enter her house you had to climb a crude rickety ladder.  The house had no electricity or indoor plumbing.  I could only imagine how she hauled water and firewood every day of her long life up that 12 foot high ladder.

Though she protested every day that there were others who were so much more in need of our assistance than she, we added a room to her old shack for a bathroom and installed indoor plumbing and electricity.  I will never forget the vast store of knowledge she had of the stories and traditions of her people who had lived there for over 200 years.  She had acquired so many skills through living off the land for nearly a century with only the resources available to her in this small mountain community.  I have an enormous admiration and respect for such resourceful people.

We camped out there in the village and every evening the residents would come and entertain us around the camp fire.  They told us their stories and sang to us with the accompaniment of their home made instruments.  They had instruments I had never seen or heard of before.  I stored these memories in my mind making note of the designs and determined that one day I would try to build some of these ancient folk instruments.  I must say I treasure these precious memories in my heart.

When I returned to Atlanta in 1990 I started a construction company.  At first we did repair work and remedial restoration of houses that had been built over the past 40 years.  We did such projects as replacing windowsills, door frames, moldings and soffit and cornice work.  I aimed to find permanent solutions for flawed designs, poor materials and workmanship.  I made frames, sills and moldings out of polyurethane and poly vinyl carbonate (PVC) to prevent future rotting. We also repaired and built new decks and patios.  I developed my own formula of chemicals and paraffinic oils to condition and preserve the decks we repaired and the new ones we made.

We started building on additions and doing bathroom and kitchen remodels.  We made our own custom cabinets.  Often we built the cabinets and moldings onsite to maximize the space inside the cabinets.  In modular cabinets built to standard dimensions you lose space between the cabinets when they are installed.  We could build cabinet units onsite as long as in eight foot sections.  I also designed, cut out and installed our own stone and tile patterns using different styles of laying and grouting to accentuate the space whether it was a shower enclosure or a kitchen backsplash.  I have always aimed to make each custom project a one of a kind that the owner would cherish and be proud.

I then started designing and building houses to be low maintenance and highly energy efficient.  I had learned over so many years the kinds of designs, craftsmanship and materials that work well over the long haul and what does not.  I used this knowledge to guide my planning and implementing my designs in the construction of our houses.  I cannot tell you how many times I have seen major structural damage from black mold, moisture and termites.  I have been totally convinced that building houses out of wood, especially wood that is not native to the region, which is more the rule than the exception, is a bad choice for the Southeastern United States.  It leads invariably to water damage, rot and insect infestation.

I chose to use products primarily used in Europe and Asia.  This product is Autoclaved Aerated Concrete which has high thermal mass and cannot be compromised by insects, water or fire.  I also used Insulated Concrete Form construction for basements and other areas that are exposed to the grade.  I have also built concrete houses that are bermed with earth to provide nearly zero heat or cooling load.  I believe each house should be designed for a particular lot or tract of land.  I considered such things as solar orientation, the natural resources present on the lot including using the timber that is cleared for the site for making roof timbers, paneling, cabinets and moldings for the house.

I designed these low load energy houses to incorporate alternative energy sources for heating and cooling.  We have employed such things as deep underground air tubes to provide natural convection air that is at a median temperature of 60-68 degrees to heat and cool a house.  In one case we used cave air and deep water from the cave to heat and cool the house.  We implemented water cooling and heating including solar thermal collectors to provide radiant heating.  I designed clerestories to maximize natural lighting and to vent the heat out of the house during the summer months.  We implemented geo thermal heating and cooling and used captured ammonia chillers for water source cooling.  Another design we implemented was using the hot air under a roof to boil such gases as ammonia which boils at a relatively low temperature to develop evaporative cooling.  We also implemented solar voltaic electric generation.  I have designed and built houses that could be completely off the grid, but the owners chose to be connected so that they could sell their surplus energy back to the electricity provider.

I greatly enjoyed the diversity of our work and projects.  I, by nature, am resistant to be stuck in a rut doing the same thing over and over again.  For us no two projects were the same but each had their own unique challenges and problems to solve.  I never built speculative houses and never had an interest in it.  Every plan I developed was for a specific client and to a particular lot. 

These principles also applied to the cabinets and furniture we built.  Cabinets and furniture were made with hand selected woods with an emphasis on selecting woods that had unique coloring, patterns and grains.  Two of my hallmarks are to implement contrasting woods for cabinet fronts and differing elements for furniture and I generally am opposed to staining woods.  If my client wanted dark finishes or light finishes I gave them options of woods that naturally are light or dark.  We finished the pieces with great detail to finely sanding the wood and rubbing out each coat of finish applied.  We normally applied 8-12 coats of finishing depending especially on the type of wood used and the formula of finishing material.  The more coats applied magnifies the unique features and natural colors of the woods.  The last coat is hand polished to a natural patina and is a sheer joy to the eyes and to stroke the hand over it. 

Many projects were hand rubbed with penetrating naphthenic oil formulas which I made specifically for the wood used.  Each different kind of wood requires differing amounts of varying oils and the number of coats required to completely seal the wood.  After the wood has reached saturation we begin to cook the oils so when applied they build up a film that can be polished.  This kind of finish as you might imagine is very time and labor intensive, but are finishes that thoroughly condition and protect the wood for centuries of use. 

I also do build up layers of the finest lacquers which are also rubbed out between each coat and highly polished on the last coat.  This is my choice most of the time for the stringed instruments I make, because of tone and vibration dynamics.  The penetrating sealers fill the woods and dampen their tone qualities.  I use lacquer that is specifically formulated for finishing stringed instruments and is flexible enough to take the expansion and contracting as the instrument is exposed to differing environs and endure the continual stress of the tensioned strings.

- Thomas Cook