Rick's Hoosier Cabinet

Rick purchased the bottom part of a Hoosier from Carol Burdick in Alfred Station. The cabinet had been in “Farm House,” her parents’ get-away cabin. When CB sold the cabin she sold the furniture in it. Rick purchased the Hoosier in order to use the porcelain table top for his own version of the famous cabinet to be made in oak and ash.

This is what we bought:

In the past several years the term 'Hoosier' cabinet has come to mean any free standing step back cabinet from the early 20th century. These include the ones made by the Hoosier Manufacturing Co as well as all the other Indiana makers. It has also come to mean many different styles of cabinet that were made in many different areas. But, primarily a Hoosier cabinet is one that usually contained a porcelain top, tambour doors, and large refillable flour bins and sifters.


There were several manufactures of Hoosier cabinets but most were located in Indiana. These include:
• Hoosier Manufacturing Co in New Castle Indiana,
• GI Sellers & Sons Company in Kokomo and later Elwood Indiana,
• McDougall Company in Indianapolis and later Frankfort Indiana,
• Coppes Brothers and Zook Inc, in Napanee Indiana.
• Cambell-Smith-Ritchie Company in Lebanon Indiana (Boone County)
• Wilson Cabinet Co in Greencastle Indiana

It's hard to say just how many were actually made to give an idea - the Hoosier Manufacturing Company sold over 300,000 cabinets in 1910 alone. It is believed that there were at least 4 million cabinets sold during the 1910s and 20s. The first cabinets came out about 1898 and reached peak sales about 1925. By the 1930s built-in kitchens caused demand for free standing cabinets to decline. Interestingly, in the last ten years or so freestanding cabinets are again becoming popular in upscale homes.


Prior to these cabinets most kitchens had numerous cabinets, tables, and boxes where baking and cooking supplies were kept. The Hoosier cabinet was introduced as a timesaver and was advertised to cut in half unnecessary kitchen work. Since all the supplies were now located in one cabinet that had its own pull out preparation surface many steps were saved. Hoosier cabinets were also popular due to a unique marketing scheme commonly called "a dollar down and a dollar a week".

Emilie's Green Cupboard

We have a blue cupboard in our kitchen. It was inspired, in a sense by an old door that was on a built in cupboard in our house purchased in 1985 as well as a punched copper panel. Rick was going to make kitchen cupboards with these punched copper panels until he decided that it wasn't really fun punching all those holes. He took the old door and built a copper panel into a new door and built a cupboard around them. This is the model for a new cupboard for Emilie and Josh in Boston.

I had a post of this story with photos in order but somehow changed the order of the photos and now can't get them sorted out so I will just post them without text. The photos show a finished cupboard and then the steps toward creating a second one. The new one will go to Somerville and hold the items of cookware for Emilie and Josh's Conscious Kitchen.

The cupboard is made in sections, dry fitted and then glued with biscuits (wooden discs that swell with the liquid glue and hold the pieces firmly in place. The frame of the cupboard is poplar, panels are pine, the shelves are birch inside and the hinges came from old cupboards in our house. The striking step-out shelf is bird's eye maple and the punched panel is copper. It seems to take a forrest to make a cubpoard.

Everything is constructed in the downstairs workroom or the garage.













A set of photos including one of the finished hutch is on flickr and there must be a way to see it by clicking on those little images in the border to the right.

Mission Style Bed

In the early 1980s, Dixie Klima and I went bed shopping. Our daughters (Kathryn Klima and Emilie Hardman) were ready for new just-for-them big-girl beds. Emilie's first bed was a white metal bed with brass details and she used it one day at a time until it was nearly 20 years old.

A few years ago, Rick decided to make a Mission Style bed for Emilie. Made of quarter-sawn oak, stately, heavy and beautiful, it now fills Em and Josh's room in Somerville. The next year he made a Queen size Mission bed for Jay and then he made a Murphy bed for Jay. Now he is building a King bed, slightly different in style, very different in size. This is a log of that newest bed.

Here's the center of the foot board.




This closeup shows the end of a wide slat getting a bit of fine tuning for a fit before assembly. (The tool is a number 90 Stanley bull nose plane. It's from England and is about as hard to find as black ebony.)



The center of the headboard was assembled next. "Hidden behind" these photos, of course, were hours and hours of planning, cutting and sanding.



Work continued in the basement to make the posts for the ends of the head and foot boards while the big elements spent some time in our messy garage.



The end posts were added. These are not single pieces of wood but laminated pieces so that all sides show the "flames" of quarter sawn oak.




Once the posts were on the headboard and foot board, Rick started working on the details. He tried on flat top pieces of different sizes to find the right size and shape to finish the posts. There are four holes in each post - one on each side of the top and two at the bottom on the side that shows. The other side of the bottom will be attached to the side rails. Ebony plugs will fit into the holes. The tiny plugs are cut and shaped to fit precisely in the holes.



This is the treatment chosen for the tops of the posts. The ebony plugs have the same pyramid shape.

Two days after putting up the image of the post tops and the ebony plugs, Rick was ready to start putting the stain on the wood.




























A nearly-completed night stand in the same style.