About Ted Ammon
First, I am a professional Aesthetician with decades of experience in woodworking. I never begin a project without a clearly articulated set of ideas about what I am doing, how I am doing it, and why. There is no such thing in woodworking as what one might call “freeform woodworking,” as if one could be the John Coltrane or Jackson Pollack of wood. There is no room in the processes of Fine Woodworking for anything but caution, deliberate intention and more caution, and thus one never takes flight on the wings of fancy with a router or belt sander. Such flights are reserved for the planning only, as in some of the works of Frank Gehry.
Second, the most general Aesthetic principles to which I subscribe are:
1) Function Follows Form, not the popular converse ‘form follows function.’
2) A successful object of Aesthetic appreciation requires unity of all its parts.
3) A successful object of Aesthetic appreciation exhibits contrasts in its parts, but never contradictions.
4) One must be able to say why each element in the work is thus and not otherwise.
Third, I highly value in my works the alternation of forms, of contrasting elements, of unexpected movements. I am thus no fan in my work of a unity born of the repetition of nearly identical parts, nor of a unity born of an apparent compulsive order. I love the Parthenon of Ancient Greece, but I never expect to fashion in wood such a thing of any sort or size.
Fourth, Creative novelty is a fundamental goal.
I was born in Vicksburg Mississippi about 7 decades ago, to a Homemaking Mama and a Civil Engineering Daddy who also carpenter-ed and woodworked. Mama taught me to cook a little, wash dishes really quickly, and to use the skinny attachment on the vacuum cleaner to great effect. At 8 Daddy handed me Great Uncle Pete’s 14oz hammer and a miscellany of nails in a coffee can, and pointed to a stump. The flat top part needed covering in a serious said Daddy, and who was I to question this solemn command? Later he showed me Uncle Pete’s miter saw and pointed to a stack of long skinny wood pieces. Be excellent to have shorter pieces for the potbelly wood stove, said Daddy. Still later Daddy handed me Uncle Pete’s chisels and pointed to some slices of an oak tree. Definitely need some fine oak kindling. Uncle Pete was a Pederson, a Swede, hence a Peterson in this country. He was a master carpenter, and I, for my part, am ¼ Swede, and still have those tools.
I went to Carr Jr., HV Cooper/South Vicksburg , then Mississippi State to study Civil Engineering and maybe Architecture somewhere. CE did nary a thing for me at the time; those folks were not asking the questions that cut my plywood, so to speak. So I found my way across campus to the English and Philosophy Departments. I left MSU with a BA and a double major, got married to Lorie Naef, and followed her to Nashville for her MSW. Then Lorie followed me to St. Louis and Washington University for my MA and PhD (Philosophy: Aesthetics and the History of Ideas), where two girls came along. And then with something like divine intervention, in 1985 a job at Millsaps College appeared. Millsaps said do you, and I said what the hell. We betook ourselves to Jackson MS and Millsaps College where I taught Philosophy from 1985 to 2020 and where Lorie did serious social work at the Child Development Clinic of UMMC. Fifty-one years down the road we’re still paired off in life, both retired, she volunteering at the two new museums in downtown Jackson and specializing in the history of the civil rights struggles, railing quietly against rank idiocy in politics, and I making sawdust and texts. Lorie helps folks vote and I help folks smile a lot and laugh more, both us loving the chirren and grandchirren, and fine sons-in-law. Lorie and I agree that one never knows. Lorie and I hug a lot. We agree that life’s good, maybe better, often best.
Tedwoodworks 