Artisan

BY PHIL HAGEN

>>> John Eugster, Woodworks By John, Las Vegas, Nevada

John Eugster, as painted by his wife Diane Eugster.

When you walk through the front door of John Eugster's suburban Las Vegas, Nevada home, on the wall is a portrait of him painted by his wife, Diane. Titled "At the Bench," it pictures Eugster hand-planing a piece of wood in his shop, and between the way he looks — with beard, overalls and long white sleeves — and the painting's early modernist style, it looks like a slice out of the late 19th century.

"It's kind of where I like to be," Eugster says with a gentle grin.

It doesn't take much time with Eugster to understand that he meant to use this tense, that he's less into time travel than he is into bringing old-style craftsmanship to the table for each piece of furniture that he creates. You'll find that Renaissance-man spirit in his minimalist aesthetic and in his garage, where all the antique hand tools aren't just for show.

Eugster's craftsmanship includes furniture, tables for artists and built-in cabinetry.

This is not just some personal challenge for the recently retired woodshop teacher; it's about the results. Eugster's custom furniture features traditional joinery — often mortise-and-tenon, but dovetail whenever practical — that gives each piece a sturdy presence and long life. He's also noted for bringing out the natural chatoyancy, or shimmering luster, in certain woods, which involves a lot of careful hand-planing, very little sanding, and painstaking hand-rubbed oil finishes instead of plastic sealants.

An especially proud moment in Eugster's 35 years of woodworking came recently at a local gallery reception, when one of his tables — whose job was to display brochures about the artists in the show — drew attention from the art patrons. "I would watch people as it would catch their eye," Eugster says. "The next thing they'd do is go over and touch it, and they'd kind of get this satisfied look on their face. That to me is really rewarding."

That display table, the centerpiece of his Web site's home page, is thus far his signature piece for a couple of other reasons, too. First is its mix of dramatic woods — big-leaf maple with an inlaid top and bottom grid made of chakte kok. Second is how the top curves down at both ends, in a subtle tribute to his favorite southern Nevada animal, the bighorn sheep.

Overall, Eugster crafts a wide range of pieces, from chairs to desks to driveway gates. Because of the large number of tract homes in Las Vegas, he also has carved out a niche in filling niches with built-in cabinetry. And given his companion's career, he's become quite skilled at easels, frames, drawing boards and other art accoutrements.

Whatever the job, he says, "I try to keep to fairly simple designs and let the wood make the statement."

That latter quality in particular caught the eye of Las Vegas interior designer Durette Candito, who just began carrying two of Eugster's pieces in the retail portion of her downtown Durette Studio.

In explaining her admiration for the pieces, Candito neatly sums up the essence of Eugster's work. "What I like is that he remains true to the nature of a piece and lets the wood come through. That's a sign of a true old-style craftsman."

Woodworks by John, www.woodworksbyjohn.com.
Durette Studio, www.durettecanditodesign.com.