Smithsonian gallery chooses Jake Cress' piece 'Oops!' for collection
Meet Jake, a 'nonartist' who makes art

By Joanne Poindexter
The Roanoke Times
Monday, July 21, 2003

FINCASTLE - Jake Cress insists that he's a cabinetmaker and not an artist.

"Artists draw and paint. I just fool with wood," he said. "I make sawdust."

But it hasn't been Cress' traditional cherry, mahogany or walnut antique replicas and restorations that have launched him nationally.

It's his funny furniture, as he calls it, those whimsical pieces that make you notice them and laugh. The "Cripple Table," with a short leg replaced by a crutch; his Self-Portrait" ; and "Hickory Dickory Clock" are among the costliest pieces that he's exhibited or that have been acquired by museums and collectors from around the county.

"Oops!" now appears to be the conversation piece. It's among a long line of tables, chairs, desks, cabinets and clock cabinets that Cress makes from scratch and to which he adds an individual touch.

"Oops!," a Philadelphia Chippendale replica, has lost the ball of its left, front leg, which is reaching for the ball.

Pictures of the chair, with a little note about Cress, have appeared in several national publications, including The Washington Post. As a result, the chair is being added to a permanent collection in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery earlier this year.

The summer edition of Colonial Williamsburg, the journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, also features the chair, appropriately under the headline, Wit, Mirth & Spleen.

A part-time professor of computer science and psychology at Northwestern University also is using the chair in an upcoming book on the role of emotions in design.

Cress is finishing the 10th and final chair - no sitting here please - in his "Oops!" series. Number 9 is the one in the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery.

Cress, 58, will probably keep No. 10 at his Fincastle home, gallery and bed and breakfast unless he gets a buyer for the pricey chair that costs upwards of $100,000. The others are in museums and private collections. It's been 20 years since he first visualized the chair. Twelve years passed before he finished the first "Oops!"

"The chair strikes a chord in people," said Kenneth Trapp, curator of the Renwick Gallery. "I see Jake saying a lot about our cultural values, especially those rooted deep in Virginia's colonial soul."

"Uh oh, the poor chair has lost its ball and doesn't want anyone to know. To me, the most interesting thing about the chair ... is that the story makes sense," Don Norman has written for his upcoming book.

"The poor chair? Certainly I don't believe the chair is animate, that it has a brain, let alone feelings and beliefs. Yet there it is, clearly sneaking out its foot, hoping nobody will notice? What is going on?

"This is an example of our tendency to read emotional responses into anything, animate or not," he wrote.

"Oops!" is unusual because "there's not a 90 degree angle anyplace," Cress said. It's crooked and curved.

He doesn't possess an engineering background, but Cress has a knack for sitting and ciphering a piece of wood before applying a sharpened blade to it.

On commissioned pieces, he sometimes makes miniatures to ensure the project comes out right.

His woodwork takes a lot of time, patience and experimentation, Cress said. "It's a challenge, which is why I like it. Anybody can do something simple."

He was inspired to do his funny furniture after being embarrassed by telling a curator in Georgetown that a woman had left her gloves on a table. The gloves were a part of the sculpture, Cress learned.

Cress' wife, Phebe, said she thinks too many people see his funny furniture as too pricey, but, she said, he also restores and builds antique pieces at competitive prices.

Family friend Rob Hagan likes to stop by to see Cress working in his shop in a cabin that dates back to 1784.

Hagan is astonished at the designs in some of Cress' finished projects. It was interesting, Hagan said, how Cress brought together the wood grains in one desk he made.

"He's an artist, like it or not," Hagan said.

© 2003 The Roanoke Times