By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine
After a long and exhausting relocation, my favorite garden furniture designer is up and running full speed again . . . and in tiny Indianola, Washington, whose entire population (almost) you can see in a 360° virtual reality photograph here. Tim Celeski is the designer, and his work is becoming legendary, in part because of its meticulous craftsman design. Celeski's work is so true to style that some of Pasadena's famous Greene and Greene houses use it exclusively.
Celeski got his start after seeing plastic furniture on the patio of a national-park-style lodge. He understood why they did it—it's weather-resistant, inexpensive, tolerates abuse—but he couldn't stomach its ugliness, and went home to try his hand at making first-quality garden furniture. In his words, he wanted outdoor furniture that was as good as anything you'd buy for the inside of the house.
It took years of work, but he came up with a series of designs that are useful, extremely durable, and quite beautiful. Just look at the pictures. He also does modular tables, matching chairs, and a new line coming out this spring (more about that in a future blog). All structural parts of the furniture are held with mortise-and-tenon or dovetail joints, so the pieces last much longer than those assembled with metal fasteners.
Most of his pieces are made to order, so you can buy, for example, an Adirondack chair sized to your own body. The comfort advantages are obvious, but it means that there's often a wait of a few weeks—not bad, considering the years each piece will be in the garden.
