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Area woodworker whips up everything from bottle stoppers to thimbles
Woodturner Charles Brown creates a weed pot Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009, in his workshop at his home in Huntington.
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HUNTINGTON -- Go out and about in Huntington and chances are you're going to run into good ol' Charlie Brown.
Looking like Santa Claus' leaner, younger brother, the white-bearded woodturner and his wife Helen make it a point to stay out and active in the community.
Active in their church and Faith in Action, they attend and support lots of art and music events in the city and can be found just about any afternoon meeting new friends at Java Joint, the coffee shop and restaurant across from Marshall University's campus.
And when the weather's nice, Brown is apt to take off on his bicycle from east Huntington and ride to Ceredo-Kenova to meet folks at McDonald's for coffee and then ride back.
While their social and community service calendar keeps him pretty busy, it's safe to say the retired industrial engineer's best work has been when he's locked away in a basement, sort of.
Brown was awarded the 2008-2009 Huntington Museum of Art's Volunteer of the Year, for his work down below in the museum's expansive vault that houses more than 14,000 objects in the permanent collection.
He's been volunteering one day a week at the museum for eight years.
In his own basement, tucked into the laundry room, is Brown's workshop, where the woodturner can turn the tiniest, forgotten scraps of cherry, sassafras, walnut and ash into beautiful bottle-stoppers, candle-holders, weedpots and wooden thimbles that sell to folks around the country.
In fact, Thanksgiving weekend, Brown, who has been in Tamarack since it started, will be demonstrating his woodturning at the Beckley-based arts and crafts stop Friday through Sunday, Nov. 27 -29.
Brown said he got into woodworking after they moved to Huntington in 1960.
He said they had been about everywhere, and Huntington felt like home.
He is from Lancaster County, Pa.; Helen is from Illinois; and they married in Kentucky, where Helen went to college at Berea, and lived in Texas as Charlie was in the Air Force.
After moving to Huntington, Brown read in the paper about a whittling workshop taught by a Swedish man, Aron Jouan, at Huntington East High School.
"I thought that would be fun, and I enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed him, so I went to several pocket-knife-only workshops with him," Brown said.
Jouan, whose picture and some of his whittled works are up in Brown's house, took Brown under his wing. Jouan helped him get into the West Virginia Craft Guild, and Brown began helping Jouan with his booth at the famous Mountain State Arts and Crafts Fair in Ripley, W.Va.
It was there that Brown saw an old-fashioned pole-lathe.
He designed and built his own and began turning wood items from small bowls and his weed pots (small pots for holding dry flower arrangements).
While many woodworkers build furniture or things on a grander scale, Brown has always been fascinated by making the smallest of items, including one of this most well-known items, thimbles.
A request from a thimble collector in 1974, began Brown's journey making thousands of thimbles for collectors all over the world.
They used to paint tiny flowers on them, and a WV, but now the Browns usually let the wood be.
"They're not the most lucrative thing to make," said Brown, who uses some of his great-great uncle's woodworking tools. "But they're enjoyable to do and they're still fun to make."
That passion for creating with wood has led Brown for many years to pass on that love to other folks.
All of his boys know how to woodwork, and so do many other folks who have ran into Brown demonstrating the craft.
He's done woodturning demonstrations all over the southeast at Georgia Southern University, at East Carolina University and is a regular demonstrator at Tamarack.
"A lot of this, you do what the wood wants you to do," said Brown, who leaves varying amounts of bark on his distinct weed pots. "... The wood tells you what you are going to do, and I like to leave as much bark on as I can."
Brown, whose work is also featured at Poplar Forest in Flatwoods, W.Va., and Lancaster Designer-Craftsmen in Lancaster, Pa., said he loves talking with curious folks and fellow woodworkers as he demonstrates at Tamarack, the arts and crafts center that draws in more than half-a-million visitors a year.
Brown demonstrates about five times a year, a paid engagement through the Tamarack Foundation, which supports the state's artists by helping them in everything from setting up Web sites to mentoring programs.
"When I do this, the idea of the demonstration is to show how I do what I sell, which I do," Brown said. "So many people are woodturners, I get a lot of questions like, 'How to you sharpen your tools?' So it ends up being very instructional even though I am there to demonstrate."
Charles Brown
RESIDENCE: A native of Lancaster County, Pa., Brown lives in the Arlington Park neighborhood in Huntington
FAMILY: Wife Helen, three sons, Mark Brown, of Huntington; Gene Brown, of Frankfort, Ky., and Charles Brown of Cincinnati. His sons are married and the Browns have five grandchildren
OCCUPATION: An industrial engineer, Brown worked at Allied Chemical in South Point, Ohio, then Houdaille in west Huntington before winding up at Marshall University where he retired on April Fools' Day in 1998.
AWARDS: Brown has won lots of awards for his woodwork from such groups as the Early American Society. He won the Mountain State Arts and Crafts Fair Hall of Fame Award in 2004. He was also named Volunteer of the Year 2008-2009 at the Huntington Museum of Art
WATCH HIM WORK: Brown will be demonstrating woodturning Thanksgiving weekend, Nov. 27-29, at Tamarack in Beckley. Go online at www.tamarackwv.com for more info.
CONTACT: Brown can be reached at 304-525-2735.
