Interview  Archives

Charles Radtke, Furniture maker
Interview by W. A. Reed from Volume 2 Issue 1

Charles Radtke was born and raised in the small Missouri river town of Hermann. One of ten children, he spent much of his childhood tramping through the woods with his father and siblings, exploring the land and developing an appreciation for nature. In 1982, Radtke left Missouri to study computer science in Chicago. At the urging of his brother, a Franciscan friar, he began working at the St. Paschal Friary in suburban Oakbrook as a part time cabinetmaker. Completing his computer courses in 1986, Radtke went to work for AT&T. There, he met his wife, Chris, who was employed as an American sign language interpreter. In 1990, their daughter, Chloe, was born. A number of moves took them through Colorado and Washington, DC, where Radtke visited every museum and gallery, and worked to develop his unique style. Influenced by the late Japanese-American George Nakashima, having studied under Swedish cabinetmaker James Krenov, Radtke now earns his living crafting fine furniture at his Riveredge Drive Studios in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

PORCUPINE: Tell me about the single malt Scotch we're sipping.

RADTKE: Glenmorangie. It's a Highland Scotch. Typically, the Scots age their single malts first in American white oak, and then transfer it to sherry casks. Or port wood. This was finished in Madeira drums. That a well-established distillery like Glenmorangie would break with tradition, makes it exciting to me. I love this Scotch.

PORCUPINE: Which came first - your taste for spirits or your vision of a spirits cabinet?

RADTKE: I liked the taste of good spirits even before I became a cabinetmaker.

PORCUPINE: It presents you with a rather unique marketing strategy... sip a few single malts with a guy, next thing you know you're building him a cabinet.

RADTKE: I've been accused of that.

PORCUPINE: Tell me about your family.

RADTKE: My folks were married shortly after World War II. I am the youngest of ten children - my father was an only child. He has lived in the same house since he was thirteen. His father was a railroad man and was killed by a train when my father was very young.

So growing up, we had a three bedroom house with twelve people living in it. My dad was always working, my mom was an English teacher. We all went to college, three ended up in corporate America. But making the big dollar was never a focus for me. My childhood memories are of literature and music. In the late 60's and early 70's, our house was defined by music.

PORCUPINE: Your father is a strong influence. Are you still close to him?

RADTKE: Absolutely. Among other things, he was a butcher. I remember him always making sausages and aging cheeses. He was never satisfied with his sausages. I think about that daily in my own work. He was always modifying what he made, changing the seasoning, thinking next time he's going to try this or that.

Yes, we're still close. He's going to be eighty-four this year. The last time I walked in the woods with my dad was in 1988.

PORCUPINE: With great affection, you've described his curiosity - about the coming winter and if the persimmon will have new saplings in the spring. Do you worry about losing him?

RADTKE: You're quoting from the poem I wrote. I'm going to miss him when he's gone... the comfort of knowing I'll see him again. Because of the influence he has always been and is. And will continue to be.

PORCUPINE: Don't you think that people who struggle with losing a parent tend to have a lot of unfinished business?

RADTKE: Yes. But we've said everything that should be said to each other. If he died tomorrow, there's nothing I'll wish I would have told him. My father knows of my faults, he knows of my greatest triumphs. And I know the same about him.

PORCUPINE: What about your mother?

RADTKE: I'm also close to my mother. She's seventy-seven. A great cook. During my rebellious years, I was able to talk more easily with her - fairly typical of a mother and son relationship, I think.

PORCUPINE: How do your siblings view your work?

RADTKE: Growing up in a large family - there's a lot of competition. For affection. Who's the funniest. Who's got the greatest political concepts going. Some of my siblings appreciate what I'm trying to do. Others feel I make an elitist product that typically only the upper three to five percent of the population chooses to afford.

PORCUPINE: How did you happen to become a cabinetmaker?

RADTKE: It happened to me. In a very fortuitous way, I ended up in Oakbrook, Illinois, to finish my degree in computer science. I worked nights in a Catholic friary - my oldest brother, who had been a Franciscan missionary in Brazil, was stationed there. It was like a trade school. They taught missionaries assorted trades. And they had complete workshops for woodworking, metalworking, auto mechanics... they had a tailor shop, a barber shop, a dental shop - name a trade and it was represented. They were renovating one wing of the building, three floors. So when I got there, they needed some help in the woodworking shop. They were making their own doors and windows and all the furniture. They had a very extensive shop, much like I have now. I had never done any woodworking. They took me under their wing and taught me all the basics of furniture making. One of the Franciscans, Brother Earl, took to me right away. He showed me what a mortise and tenon was, how to use a planer and a band saw. The furniture we built was bulky, fairly Gothic looking.

PORCUPINE: Have you gone back to look at any of the furniture you built in those years?

RADTKE: Yes. I'm not particularly proud of it. I look at it and ask myself, what could I have possibly been thinking?

PORCUPINE: Later, you studied under James Krenov.

RADTKE: He's a Swedish cabinetmaker who now has a school in California. I studied with him in Colorado, at Anderson Ranch in 1989. I'd been making furniture on my own at this point. He was a strong influence. He wrote four books on furniture making that were really philosophy books.

PORCUPINE: Yet I see in your work, a very distinct Eastern influence.

RADTKE: You're right. And I have no clue where that comes from. Another furniture maker I respect is the late George Nakashima. He was influential, more on a design level. His pieces were well-constructed but a little heavy-handed, I think. When one looks back on the history of furniture and the pieces that have withstood the test of time, most are Korean or Japanese.

PORCUPINE: Are you satisfied with your work? Pleased with some of the pieces you've created?

RADTKE: There are a handful of pieces that I'm proud of. A finite number - and I've been making furniture for thirteen years now. When I say I'm always striving to improve, I want to make certain I don't miss anything. I want to be able to make intelligent, sensitive decisions and not waste the wood. David Pye said that "...woodworking is a craft of risk." You've got one chance with a piece of wood.

PORCUPINE: Describe the process for me.

RADTKE: Let me say that what I do best, are free standing cabinets. That's the way I think, the way I feel. When I look at a piece of wood, I am immediately asking myself... what kind of a cabinet might come from this? Because to me, a cabinet is the most curious, the most intriguing piece of furniture in the home. Cabinets hold things... secrets. I'm drawn to that. And you have to interact with a cabinet. You have to touch it, open it, manipulate it, work with it. There are many things to consider. Not only the aesthetics, the proportions, but all the moving parts.

But the process of building... I really don't know where to start with that. I've made cabinets out of trees that I sat in or played under as a child. That changes your whole sense of working... and respecting the wood.

PORCUPINE: You have said that in the pieces you construct, you let the wood suggest a shape, that you "...coax the grain patterns and textures out of a plank."

RADTKE: That's a good description of the process. Someone might pick up a piece of wood and perhaps think about the color value or notice if the grain is wild or calm. They might think about those things and incorporate them into a piece. But when you take it to the level of... if I were to slice it again and book match* it, what kind of pattern am I going to see? What kind of shape is it going to suggest, then? That's where the coaxing comes in.* Book matching is a process where the plank is re-sawn and folded open such that the grain pattern appears as a mirror image.

PORCUPINE: So you work with the material first?

RADTKE: Yes. It's like the uncut stone. All that lies within - grain patterns, color - is just waiting to show itself to somebody. Removing plane shavings you can read a newspaper through will change a grain pattern. Or sometimes there's a wonderful blotch of color. One pass of a hand plane too many and it's gone forever. That's a tremendous responsibility.

PORCUPINE: And yet your work has a spiritual quality.

RADTKE: It's a very complicated process, this spending time with the wood.

PORCUPINE: You use practices and processes that are "time-honored." Do you consciously attempt to create a timeless quality as well?

RADTKE: Always. You can get sucked into the fashion of the day. But there are primary things that humans respond to... whether it's furniture, sculpture, photography, music, poetry. Creating a timelessness requires not so much vision, as patience and sensitivity.

PORCUPINE: What about technique and precision?

RADTKE: Greatly important to me. I would rather make a piece that was simple in technique and cleanly executed, than a piece that was very complicated but didn't quite work. If you're going to do something complex, you'd better do it precisely.

PORCUPINE: What about function?

RADTKE: To me, it always has to function. I make a cabinet, first to be used. It should please you when you handle it. If it happens to be beautiful when you're not using it, so much the better.

PORCUPINE: You use a wide array of woods, many of which I've never even heard of. How do you choose?

RADTKE: I don't choose by going to the lumber yard and seeing what their list of woods are. That's never appealed to me. What is considered fine cabinet wood by tradition, isn't always the only option. Persimmon, mulberry, sassafras, catalpa... those are all woods, you talk to wood brokers and they don't even know what it is. Yet there it is - it's beautiful, it's certainly hardwood and it works nice and it's stable. It's glorious but it's not cut by a sawmill, so nobody knows about it. Lilac... dogwood. It just goes on and on. If the wood looks like it has some visual potential and it has integrity, structurally, it's a candidate.

PORCUPINE: How did you develop your knowledge of hinges and hardware? Of fabrics? The copper enameled panels for your music cabinet?

RADTKE: My dad always taught me that if you're not going to get the best, why even bother. So I've always been aware of what's made well and what isn't. And I'm very observant - I notice such things. Hinges... hardware. The enameled copper was made by a friend of mine, Sarah Perkins. She does exquisite work. I learned about fabrics at the friary. I have a love of many materials and mediums.

PORCUPINE: Tell me about your inner light series.

RADTKE: The inner light series was many years in the making. Traditionally, cabinets are all closed up. It's like a different world inside the doors. At first, the idea was to deal with the interior through a painting (of scenes or textures) process called faux-finishing. But I scrapped that idea. Too iconoclastic. Too gaudy. My inner light series allows light to come into the cabinet via the top being set slightly apart from the case, but attached through joinery. And lets the light shine out through the front doors. I like how the cabinets deal with natural light.

PORCUPINE: It's interesting that you place yourself inside the cabinet. I wonder how many cabinetmakers have put themselves there.

RADTKE: I enjoy bringing the inside of the cabinet to the outside, almost turning the cabinet inside out. It's a very personal space.

PORCUPINE: I find myself asking about cabinets. You also build desks. Dining tables and occasionally, chairs.

RADTKE: I do enjoy those things, but my vision on variations is limited. They certainly are a test of my skills. And those skills carry over to my cabinets.

PORCUPINE: Do you develop an affection for the pieces you create? Do you become attached to them? Find it difficult to let them go?

RADTKE: My feeling is that a part of my being is going to be left behind. And I wonder how it will act in public. When I walk out the door, the human voice for that piece is gone. I'm not going to be there to defend it.
You build up a relationship. A bond. I visit one of my cabinets in someone's home, I actually feel bad about opening it. It's theirs now. They might have something in there they don't want me to see.

PORCUPINE: Still inside the cabinet.

RADTKE: Yeah.

PORCUPINE: Was it a difficult decision to give up the security of corporate life and take a chance that you might not be able to provide for your family?

RADTKE: No. I was still single when I left corporate life. What was difficult for me to accept, was how much money I was making while at AT&T. I wasn't accustomed to the lifestyle and I wasn't comfortable with it. After working there for three years, I quit on April Fool's Day. To humor myself. It just wasn't that important to me.

PORCUPINE: Did your loss of hearing play a role in your decision?

RADTKE: No. Everybody's got some... compromise in life.

PORCUPINE: How did the decision affect your approach to your craft?

RADTKE: I think my decision to quit, to not even ponder the financial aspects, affected it greatly. Without knowing it, I freed myself up to do exactly the work that I love.

PORCUPINE: Did it change your work?

RADTKE: My work didn't have any definition at that time.

PORCUPINE: What kind of sacrifices has your family had to make?

RADTKE: Huge, I think. Chris, fortunately, has always been interpreting or has been a teacher since we've been together. And now we have a six year old daughter, Chloe, who's seen the worst of my career. Huge sacrifices. I've felt guilty about it in the past. Chris was making the money and I was just making things and hoping they'd sell. That didn't really seem fair. Chris and Chloe were willing to eat Ramen noodles and macaroni & cheese three nights a week to support this habit, this vision. I'm fortunate they love me so much - nobody ever complained. Nobody told me to stop.

PORCUPINE: But don't you think that your work also brings them great joy?

RADTKE: I hope so.

PORCUPINE: Do you ever question your decision to take the less traditional path?

RADTKE: No.

PORCUPINE: What about Chris? As you said, much of the responsibility for supporting the family has fallen on her shoulders.

RADTKE: In her strength, she doesn't look back. She never questioned whether I really wanted to do this in the first place. I admire that. It's a very human thing that she does. It's genuine, sensitive... and very endearing.

PORCUPINE: You prefer to work alone.

RADTKE: I do. I had a partner before I moved to Cedarburg. I'm not convinced that it works with a second or a third person involved. Because I make choices on every single piece of wood that goes into a cabinet. To have a second person involved...

PORCUPINE: And yet you occasionally collaborate with others.

RADTKE: It's most easy when the other person is not a woodworker. Although there is a furniture maker in Canada, Mike Hansen, who I can collaborate with.

Mike came to work with me for a month this summer. He came bearing the most impressive gifts - Swiss pear, huge chunks of ebony. He brought a piece of pink ivory to show me, the rarest wood in the universe. It grows only in a couple of regions in Africa and is harvested when the Zulu chief's eldest son comes of age. It's very expensive. And it's pink. I'd never had a piece in my shop.

So Mike and I worked together on some projects... the communication between us is very open.

PORCUPINE: How does that work?

RADTKE: In my shop... it's my space, my material. I can only hope that when I go to his shop, it's the same thing.

We had our differences. It was a typical live-in relationship. On the day Mike left, he was rushing around, packing up his hand planes, loading them into his truck. The last thing he did was walk over to my band saw and rip the piece of pink ivory right down the middle. He handed me half, kept half for himself, climbed in his truck and was gone.

PORCUPINE: And what were your thoughts as he drove away?

RADTKE: That the experience was kind of like a Catholic mass - when the priest breaks the host, eats half of it and leaves the other half for the server.

PORCUPINE: Many of those you collaborate with have made similar decisions to yours, some of the same sacrifices.

RADTKE: Absolutely. We talk about it on occasion. But we don't dwell on it. It's just part of the process.

PORCUPINE: What keeps you awake at night - financial concerns or the creative process?

RADTKE: Never financial concerns. Not because I have any money - because I don't. It's just not what I think about.

PORCUPINE: But you must encounter financial concerns - I've heard you talk about taking out a business loan to purchase some of the Lake Superior logs. How do you manage those concerns, internally, so that they don't interfere with the process?

RADTKE: So far, the process has always won out.

PORCUPINE: Do you consider yourself an artist?

RADTKE: Absolutely not.

PORCUPINE: You have said you prefer the word artisan.

RADTKE: Yes. What I'm trying to do is rooted in the craft of cabinetmaking. The focus is on process or the piece. Never the person.

PORCUPINE: Your work appeals to most of the senses. Certainly to sight. Touch. To smell. And I suppose for spirits cabinets, even to taste. Do you also listen to the wood?

RADTKE: I like the tactual vibration of a closing cabinet door or the slightest resistance in the sliding of a well-fitted drawer. A sound that is not metallic or mechanized or standoffish.

PORCUPINE: What else do you hear?

RADTKE: A sharp hand plane actually sings when you're planing wood. You could hear it from across the room. I can feel it in my hand.

PORCUPINE: Is it from this multi-sensory approach that you achieve your timeless quality?

RADTKE: That's the focus. Yeah, it has everything to do with that. But the technical aspect is there as well. Where the timelessness comes from is too multi-dimensional to define. It's a whole array of things.

PORCUPINE: And there is also an emotional response to your work.

RADTKE: From the human aspect that I hope is present in the piece.

PORCUPINE: I've heard you say that a hundred years from now you'd like people "...to run their hands across the surfaces, feel traces of a hand plane, and be reminded of the spirit of both the tree from which it came and the person who gave it form."

RADTKE: Ultimately, when all is said and done, when somebody looks at my work three or five generations from now, it's not me, specifically, that I want them to think about. I want them to think that somebody cared enough about this handle to carve it out with a very sharp knife and give it a graceful shape. That somebody cared enough to hand plane the bottom side of a drawer that nobody's ever going to see. I want them to appreciate the human aspect.

Visit Charley's website with more photographs of his work:

Charles Radtke~Furniture Maker