Most people look at a heap of limbs and branches and see a pile of brush. Mike Minning sees possibilities.
\n
\n\t\t
\n A straight, strong branch becomes the framework for a bench. A crotched limb becomes the spindles for its back.<\/p>\n
“The trick is the material,” Minning said. “I let the curve or shape of the wood determine the piece. There’s no measuring. That’s how I keep it natural.”<\/p>\n
Natural is what friends, neighbors and those who pass by Minning’s Marion Township home like about Mike’s Creations, rustic furniture that’s more artistic than functional.<\/p>\n
“It’s so different,” said Dawne Storie, a neighbor who has two of Minning’s benches in her backyard. “It’s not stuff that you buy at the store and put together. It has character and distinction. I don’t think any two pieces are the same.”<\/p>\n
Minning, a project engineer for seating at Plymouth’s Johnson Controls, fell in love with woodworking at age 13 when his mother got him a workbench and a jigsaw and he made a wall-mounted gun rack.<\/p>\n
“Whenever a chainsaw goes off in the neighborhood, everyone knows it’s me,” he said.<\/p>\n
Minning can make fine finished pieces. He’s made a poker table with hinged legs and a detailed box for tying and carrying fishing flies, but it’s the rustic stuff – benches, tables, chairs and arbors – that keeps his imagination flowing.<\/p>\n
“We were cutting down trees and the neighbors were trimming trees and I saw all these beautiful limbs and thought something should be done with them,” he said. “I started putting ends together and this is what I came up with.”<\/p>\n
Minning prefers red pine for his rustic garden furniture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most people look at a heap of limbs and branches and see a pile of brush. Mike Minning sees possibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}