James Krenov
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Krenov is a world-famous woodworker.
James Krenov was born in Wellen in Kamchatka in 1920. Currently he lives in Fort Bragg, CA where he still makes cabinets. As of 2002, he no longer teaches at College of the Redwoods, whose fine woodworking program he founded.
[edit] External links
- Krenov's personal web site
- A transcript of an interview with Krenov, stored at the Smithsonian Institution
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(Note to editors: you may include this if you wish or delete it. It's not a minor edit.) "I first met Jim Krenov in 1958 or 1959 when he was in Stockholm, Sweden at Malmstens Furniture School and I was a student at the University of Stockholm on the G.I. Bill. We were close friends and he was best man at my wedding. I'd bought a service for ten of Gense stailness steel tableware and asked Jim to make me a teak chest for it. Such a simple job was really beneath his talents, but he finally agreed and this turned out to be the first of a number of chests he later made for tableware. Jim Krenovs p[arents had fled the Red Army at the time of the Russian revolution. He lived briefly in Alaska and moved to Seattle during World War II where he worked for a ship's chandlery. Because he spoke fluent Russian he often spent time aboard Russian ships that had come into Seattle for war materials. The Russians persuaded him to consider returning to the Sovciet Union and he moved to Sweden in preparation for emigration, but the Soviets wouldn't give him a visa. He was a successful freelance writer for a time in Sweden. At the time if a naturalized US citizen stayed abroad more than five years that citizenship lapsed, and Jim became a stateless citizen for some years. A US Supreme Court challenge to the citizenship rule proved that there was no constitutional clause that said there were two classes of US citizens, and his citizenship was restored, enabling him to return to the United States. Jim's instinct for what can be created from a single plank of rare of exotic wood is phenomenal.-- Harley L. Sachs, Prof. emeritus."
