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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Home Design -> Harv Mastalir
Colorado wood worker Harv Mastalir designs one piece at a time
 In
his tool-laden industrial garage, Harv Mastalir bends over a walnut table. It’s
the only piece of furniture in sight. As usual, he concentrates on one work at a
time. This is no furniture factory. It's a one-man shop. Mastalir has spent 20
years designing and making furniture by hand. In a field with only a handful of
contemporaries, he has built a reputation as a master woodworker bent on
perfection. Mastalir lives in Boulder and teaches at the Center for Furniture
Craftsmanship at Rockport, Maine and the Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado.
FRL: Now that your work is in galleries, do you call yourself a wood worker,
craftsman or furniture designer?
 MASTILIR:
I went full time in 1985 and by 1990 became better known, and began dealing with
galleries. Fine furniture making is still a small world. What’s interesting
now is that some guys used to be furniture makers, but now call themselves
artists. If you make a chair and if it’s uncomfortable, and you can’t sit in
it—then it’s art. Everyone puts an artist on a pedestal. I see crafts and
art on an equal level, but on different branches of the same tree. It’s just
the medium that we use for self-expression. I’m bound by function. A chair is
not a symbol about sitting. You sit. I don’t do narrative. But what we all do
is self-expression. Making a humble chair is about being human. I make so many
decisions in every chair that I make. Those are my values. I’m at the
conservative end of furniture making—I worry about tight joints. What I do is
what people want. A table that seats six—there’s a framework for me.
FRL: Once you said that wood workers have to be compulsive. Is that positive
or negative?
MASTILIR: On working and solitude: I’m taking a personality defect and
turning it into an asset. "Jesus Christ!" I hear people say, "Is
this guy compulsive!" Furniture design is a socially acceptable compulsion.
A one-man shop tends to be kindred spirits. I can indulge in this passion and
people like it and they’re paying me.
FRL: Wood by itself is gorgeous. You never paint your designs, is it
important to you that the wood be beautiful?
 MASTILIR: Wood is so
cool. You can sand a board, hang it on a wall and it’s pretty. Some just buy
fancy wood with spectacular grain, sort of like they’re hanging it on a wall.
I take my designs and paint them flat black. If it looks good like that then it’s
worthy of wood.
Design should have integrity. The last thing I want is to hear is "nice
wood." I use mostly northern American native hardwoods: cherry, maple,
walnut, ash. If I want brown, then I use brown wood. Red, then I’ll use a red
wood. I pick the wood rather than the stain. Sometimes I use ebony.
 There’s
such a palette of wood to choose from: curly maple, and even the way you cut
woods can give you a pattern. There’s a lot to play with. My favorite: always
the one I’m working on right now.
FRL: You make other things besides furniture. What’s the most unusual?
MASTILIR: I make crutches for people who have to use them for the rest of
their lives. Have you looked at crutches? They’re ugly. I like to think it
helps them get through the world. I like doing odd things, canes, too. Once I
walked into a woman’s house. She had canes in a bucket in a corner. Every one
was ugly. I don’t want my canes to end up like that.
FRL: You manage to make a living as a wood worker. But isn’t that unusual?
MASTILIR: It’s still hard to make a living in woodworking. It’s expensive
and that reflects the time involved. People who come to me understand that. They
have to wait for me. They wish that I could work on more than one piece at a
time. But more and more they understand. I offer something that you just can’t
go out and buy. What I make is very private. I make furniture that I’d want to
live with. I like teaching, but don’t want to be an administrator. And wouldn’t
want to teach to the exclusion of my work
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