• A New Focus for Hewn & Hammered

    I want to start out by apologizing for the infrequent posts here in the last six months. Family responsibilities have kept me (happily!) very busy.

    Thus, in an attempt to increase the amount of interesting, useful, readable content here, I've decided to change the focus of the site somewhat. While we will still focus on architectural and design issues, we'll expand a little bit – we'll still include content related to old homes & the modern and historical Arts & Crafts Movements, but I'll also be posting regular articles on more contemporary, non-A&C work.

    Modern furniture, architecture and design objects – still, always, with an emphasis on the wood, the hand-made, the product of skilled craft – will become a big part of this site. I know some of you are not nearly as interested in this sort of thing, but I hope this will bring a large number of new readers here. I promise to keep posting things that fans of Arts & Crafts will appreciate, though!

  • getting out the vote

    You know what I’d really like for my birthday this year? I’d like to get an award. Any kind of award. I’m not sure we’d qualify for "best local blog" or website, given that while we do have a disproportionate number of entries on Sacramento-area homes & architecture, we’re certainly not nailed to my own hometown, but that’s the category closest, since there’s no "best website about the Arts & Crafts Movement" category.

    If you all wouldn’t mind too much, I would be so appreciative if you’d visit the Sacramento News & Review‘s Best of Sacramento poll and vote for us. In exchange, I promise to write a really interesting article on John Hudson Thomas next week.

  • site additions and changes

    Hi there. I’m midway through a redesign of the site, and have been thinking of incorporating a forum – a simple bulletin board. Do you folks think that would be useful? Any comments on features I should have or that I don’t need? Please let me know in the comments of anything you’d really like to see.

    I tried to incorporate a house registry and calendar into the last version of Hewn & Hammered, but they weren’t that well-thought-out and people didn’t use them (and I hardly ever added events to the calendar). But people are always emailing me questions about remodel projects, or asking to identify a particular maker’s mark, things like that – I thought maybe the forums would be useful. But I’m open to suggestions.