James krenov biography
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James Krenov was born Dmitri Dmitrievich Krenov on October 31, 1920 in Uelen, Russia, the easternmost settlement in Siberia, where his mother Julia had taken a remote job teaching the local indigneous Chukchi people after being forced from her home in St. Petersburg by the Russian Revolution. His parents were Russian nobility and loyal to the Imperial Government, and were subsequently chased from Russia by the Bolshevik revolutionaries, after which the family spent two years in Shanghai, China. In Shanghai, Krenov’s father Dmitri found work as a lawyer under his father, Alexander Sergeyevich Khrenov, an influential architect and watercolorist whose upper-crust social status had also necessitated his fleeing the revolution.
After his parents could no longer stay in Shanghai, due to his grandparents’ departure for Europe, the Krenov family left Asia for Seattle. After months of piecemeal housekeeping and nannying work, his mother obtained a position with the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a teacher. Her work took the family to Alaska for two postings, first in Sleetmute, nearly 400 miles up the Kuskokwim River from 1924 to 1928, and in Tyonek, on Cook’s Inlet, from 1930 to 1933. During these remote stints in the Alaskan wilderness, Krenov developed a determined self-sufficiency, v
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We are particularly proud to announce this forthcoming biography of James Krenov written by Brendan Gaffney. Like Brendan and many other woodworkers, we were entranced by Krenov’s books the moment we picked them up. While Krenov was an incredibly talented woodworker, he was equally skilled in communicating his thoughts on the craft. In fact, it’s rare to find a serious woodworker who was not influenced by the man.
Despite Krenov’s deep influence, little is known of his life outside of his books and the occasional magazine article. This remarkable blind spot is something we have longed to correct here at Lost Art Press. And we think Brendan – with the full cooperation of Krenov’s family, friends and The Krenov Foundation – is uniquely positioned to illuminate Krenov’s life.
Below is the first of many entries to come on Krenov’s remarkable life.
— Christopher Schwarz
When Oscar Fitzgerald, furniture historian and scholar, visited James Krenov (1920-2009) in the summer of 2004, he was there to record the old cabinetmaker’s story for the Smithsonian Institution’s oral history archives. Within the first few minutes of the tape, Krenov responded to the standard “where were you born, etc.” line of questioning with a characteristically
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James Krenov
American household goods maker
James Krenov (October 31, 1920 – September 9, 2009) was a artisan and cottage furnituremaker.
Biography
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