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Artisan joins talented cast at show Photo by Bob Pennell A wooden lamp sits in the foreground while Dan Sheret works on a granite-topped table and chairs in his Central Point shop. The table is at right. Furniture, harps and more will be at annual event By BILL VARBLE Don't miss it What : Siskiyou Woodcraft Guild's annual show When : 1 to 6 p.m. Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday Where : U.S. Hotel Ballroom, Jacksonville Dan Sheret didn't set out to be a woodworker. He'd been a hand weaver and spinner for a dozen years in Taos, N.M., when he moved to Vermont to run an art gallery. There he met a maker of Irish country furniture who was looking for an apprentice. "I spent three months hand-planing table tops," Sheret says. These days the Central Point man makes custom furniture and reproductions of traditional designs. He still has that plane. Sheret is among the wood craftsmen who will be showing their work at the Siskiyou Woodcraft Guild's annual show starting Thursday at the U.S. Hotel in Jacksonville. The exhibit will include custom furniture, musical instruments and wood sculptures as well as ceramics and visual art. (For more on the guild, see www.siskiyouguild.org ) Right now Sheret is working on a table ordered by a client who wanted a knockout piece to put in a large entryway. It's a 200-pound piece of polished Italian granite set in quilted maple, a cut of wood from a big-leaf maple that shows a "quilty" grain somewhat in the manner of birdseye maple. The table is now awaiting glass panels being custom-made in Portland to fit into Sheret's art-nouveau-influenced legs just above where the corbels mark the transition from the table's legs to its feet. Sheret figures he'll have 100 hours in the piece by the time it's done. "I love doing them by hand," he says. Except for sanding. That task is as tedious now as it was back when Carles Shackleton, of Vermont, took Sheret on as an apprentice because he knew absolutely nothing and therefore had no bad habits to unlearn. It took him three days to do one table when he started. He got up to doing three a day. One day he asked his boss if he had what it took to make it building furniture by hand. "Yes," came the reply, "but not here." It was a production shop. For one-of-a-kind work, Sheret would have to move on. He went to Portland and studied at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts for two years. In 1993 he opened a shop in Ruch. More recently he and his wife found a house and a large shop near Central Point. "The house needed tons of work," he says. "But the shop was great." These days Sheret will make you a nice reproduction of a Seymour desk for $3,500 (an original Seymore game table went for $486,000 at a recent auction). He also teaches private woodworking classes a couple of nights a week. He likes to point to the power tools in his shop and tell beginning woodworking students he has $4,000 wrapped up in the things. Then he points to the hand tools, $20,000 worth. The contrast says quite a bit about Sheret's work. He says his students are mostly middle-aged men and retirees who say they always wanted to work with wood. He usually starts them off making a drawer. "If you can make a drawer you can make anything," he says. From the drawer his students move up to, say, a Valley of Virginia side table, a small, classic piece often used these days as a telephone stand. Among work by others in the show, look for themes from furniture to musical instruments with stops in between. Glen Hill, of Phoenix, makes one-of-a-kind harps. Bo Leyden, of Ashland, makes folk harps and dulcimers in his Calliope Musicworks. Roger Butterfield of Medford is a wood carver. All Miguelucci, of Ashland, makes custom furniture and does furniture repair. Beth Petersen and Mark Kelz make traditional baskets using Oregon hardwoods such as yew, ash and manzanita. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA