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Michael Mode is a self-taught lathe artist, born in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, in 1946. His first experience of woodturning came in 1973 while watching a Moroccan craftsman using an arab bow lathe to make mashrabiya spindles. A fews years later when trying a lathe himself for the first time, his aptitude, passion, and design sensibility for woodturning immediately became obvious. His earliest efforts focused on lidded containers created on a foot-powered lathe made from an antique sewing machine. A motorized lathe soon replaced the foot power, but the theme of lidded vessels continued through all his major works until May of 1999 when he began creating laminated bowls as well.
Michael draws inspiration from several sources, including the material itself, particularly burls and figured woods; from the interplay of openness and closure in a lidded form; from the art and architecture of Mughal India and the Islamic world which he visited extensively in over two years of world travels; and most recently in the combination of geometric patterns with the curvature of turned objects to produce surface designs of intricate symmetry and grace.
Michael’s work has been purchased for numerous museum collections, including the Renwick Gallery of American Craft of the Smithsonian, as well as many of the private collections in the United States. He has taught aspects of his woodturning skills at symposiums of the American Association of Woodturners and for local chapters of the same organization as well as at the Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and other craft schools around the country. He has written articles for Fine Woodworking, American Woodworker, and Wood Magazine and his work is featured in various books about woodturning and woodworking. He lives with his wife and family in New Haven, Vermont, where he maintains a one person woodturning studio.
Lidded Container
Box Elder, Walnut, and Ebony | 8" h x 6" dia | $1,200.
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