James Krenov

He and his family left Russia the following year, and after some time in Shanghai, China, they moved to a remote village in Alaska, where his parents worked as teachers.

Jim spent his teen years there, where he developed a love for the sea and began building model boats at first, graduating to sailboats before long.

Krenov taught and lectured about his approach to woodworking at places such as the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, Boston University, UC Santa Cruz, Graz, Austria, as a Fulbright guest at New Zealand's Craft Council, Takayama, Japan, and Anderson Ranch, Colorado.

In 1981, Krenov was invited to start the Fine Woodworking Program at the College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg, California.

He became an Elected Fellow, American Craft Council in 2000, and was the first non-British recipient of the Annual Award of the Society of Designer-Craftsman's Centennial Medal in 1992.

As a professor at the College of the Redwoods, Krenov influenced many up-and-coming craftsmen including Yeung Chan, a now master craftsman.

Krenov felt that details such as uniformly rounded edges, perfectly flat surfaces, and sharp corners remove the personal touch from a piece of furniture.

His books extoll the virtues of clean lines, hand-planed surfaces, unfinished or lightly finished wood, and techniques that Krenov referred to as "honest".

Although Krenov believed machinery has its place in the shop, (namely to efficiently complete the relatively grueling and crude early stages of stock removal and thicknessing) he felt an over-dependence on power tools removes the "fingerprints" left on the finished piece that only handwork can leave, and alienates the craftsman from his work.

Krenov criticized the trend in woodworking schools toward the early use of power tools, instead of building a foundation of hand skills.

Graduates from Krenov's College of the Redwoods classes have gone on to professional furniture-making, writing craft books, and teaching in many programs throughout the world.