This little section of our blog is devoted to customer letters and comments. We are fortunate enough to get e-mails and letters from our customers with comments, suggestions, and compliments. We will start to post some of those up here. I guess it is a little self promotion, but we are proud of what we do. Anyone visiting the blog and website is welcome to post as well. Suggestions and comments are more than welcome.
Welcome to the hardware forum of our little blog. Please feel free to post hardware comments and questions here. One of us will post a reply as needed. Any of our readers, if there are any, are also welcome to chime in with comments.
This door chest was made by Mark Dutton and was featured in the gallery of the June2005 Fine Woodworking magazine. The wood is air-dried walnut from a tree that was cut to make
room for a public library expansion in Mark's hometown of Warsaw, NY. The inspiration came from a factory
visit to the Stickley Furniture plant in Manlius, NY and a long search for the
perfect hardware to suit our mission-style furnishings. The drawer
fronts are from consecutive boards in the log. The balance of the
eight-foot boards will be used for drawer fronts on a matching tall dresser,
continuing the grain pattern.
View this project »
Sometime in the next couple of days or weeks, Barb will quietly begin work on the new catalog. With me covering most of the day to day operations, Barb is free to begin working. Always a massive project, it seems like we just made a new catalog. We hope to add some new products, including our new cabinet latch (which is not ready yet and we posted about before). We also hope to be able to offer some high security deadbolts to go with our iron latch sets. Security locks are something that has been missing in our line and it seems like we finally have a source and someone to help guide us through the process. Locks are fairly complex, with a variety of options and size issues so it is important to get right.
Maybe you are wondering what the folks at Horton Brasses are up to lately. Well, in addition to working on our new product, the SL-6 latch (see earlier post), we are working our way through a rash of injuries and illnesses (see our disabled list). This week, for the first time in a month, our regular shippper Mary Hayes returned to work. Like a breath of fresh air, her smile and laugh bring a lightness to the place we haven't had in a while. Barb and Toby returned to work a little more than a week ago. Barb has gone right into the color room here to help Chris learn to color a little better. Chris does a great job, but a little training goes a long way. Myself, I am relieved to have the help.
We are about to begin working on our next catalog already. The current one will run out early next winter, maybe even late fall, so it is that time already.
We hope to turn this blog into something new and different for the woodworking community. A place to post messages and event details. A place to get advice and to learn new things. And a place to showcase fine furniture and antiques. However, it is not a place to sell furniture and antiques, just a place for community to see them and discuss them.
We are working on a new bit of advertising. After much consideration, we feel it is time to market a little more agressively. We have found a place where we think people who may need our products go, and we will begin advertising there shortly.
That's about all for now.
Dear folks,
We are on our last morning in Hanoi. I'm sitting here looking out the door at a drizzly morning, with bananas, rice gruel, pineapples, bricks, and food stands, all going by on shoulder poles in baskets.
To bring you up to speed, we have been unable to get online with any regularity for nearly 2 weeks. I don't know if it is government interference, or just capacity to North America, but we cannot usually connect. Worse by far, sometimes we connect, write something and when we go to send, the whole thing just disappears. Both Barb & I have had humorous, deeply perceptive, and inciteful posts go missing (hey, prove me wrong). It just kills the spirit, and the moment is gone when a significant piece of writing evaporates.
So I'm up early watching the rain. Today we leave for the airport at 10AM. Arrive in Newark at 11:30PM and spend the night there. Bus and train thru NYC to New Haven to meet Orion, and then home; midday Saturday. I'm tired just contemplating it.
We had a wonderful week in Hue, which I think Barb did manage to get one or two things out about. Wonderful city, deep history, both with we Americans, and far beyond. Spooky experience in some ways given my memories of those times, and the evidence on the ground; but deeply reassuring when we got to see the reaction of the Vietnamese, and the regrowth and recovery that has taken place with the latest generation. We just loved biking around the countryside, and Hue is a small city, easy to escape. Small villages are connected by paved paths, sometimes only 1 meter wide. They wind trough the fields and villages for km after km. We would wander, getting lost on top of lost. When it was time to get back just a shrug, and a questioning Hue? would set us right.
Hoi An, from where we just returned, is a brand name tourist destination, and though it has its definite beauties, is our least favorite place. All other places even if touristic, had a life of their own. Hoi An is one of those tourist destinations where the central and consuming business is tourism.
Tourism is always a means of extracting the maximum value from the product: ie send the poor fool home with as little money as possible. In the west this is done with great sophistication: $25 T-shirts, $8 beers, $xxx admission charges, etc. etc. Vietnam is no worse, but it has yet to learn much sophistication about the process. Prices are whatever your clothing, demeanor and actions allow. There is an assumption that this will probably be the only chance any given vendor has to get their piece, so get what you can. Like i said, really no different than our tourist spots, but the crassness and pure visibility of the grabbing grubbyness of the process grates,and becomes deeply burdensome. Too bad. We did have some lovely days, sunny, warm beautiful river, town beach. Nice wonderful rides in the country.
So we have some notes from the times we were incommunicado. I don't know how much will be sent out when we return. Things are busy at work, and the moment will be gone.
So we'll be in touch again when we are in CT.
love to all.
T
Good morning!
For some strange reason, we have a good connection this morning in Hanoi! Not that I expected it--we are staying the same hotel we have been in twice before and never had great access; but it was meant to be today, apparently.
Ending our trip independantly was very important for us both. We refreshed and reinvigorated and kept our own timetables. This meant napping in the midday and early afternoons; waiting for the intense heat to pass us by. Both Hoi An and Hue were hot--Hoi An was hottest, partly because of a weather system that was passing over that part of the country.
As many of our customers know, we at Horton Brasses are big on holidays. this section of the blog will keep you posted as to when we will be closed in the near future.
Horton Brasses is always looking for new products, and a new one is right around the corner. Coming in the next couple of months will be a brand new pantry latch. Designed to match the style and finishes of our very popular
SL-4, the SL-6 is a larger version with the same style and grace. For years customers have requested a larger latch and now we finally have one. Keep an eye out, we will let you know when this becomes available.
Chris has been a customer for many years and lives and works in the great state of Maine. His designs are Shaker influenced, some are precise reproductions and others are created in the spirit of the Shaker principles.
View this project »
