I have often been asked, as I am sure every other artisan has been asked, "Where do you get your ideas? Where do your designs come from?"

Sometimes I wonder what people who ask such questions are thinking. Maybe they have never experienced an euphonious moment or had a dream like the one Jorma Kaukonen had in which he heard his brilliant guitar instrumental, "Embryonic Journey," in its entirety. Maybe some people just don't get ideas. My wife gets so many ideas that I have considered putting up a website called ideas.com where people who found themselves short of ideas could, for a small fee, download some.

But for me the truth is that ideas usually come out of situations that, for one reason or another, took a somewhat different path than the one I had originally envisioned. Some flaw that needed to be covered up or a shortage of a certain wood, maybe due to a miss-cut. Sometimes, right in the middle of a project, I see something that I had not anticipated and then I have to decide if I will incorporate it into the project at hand or use it on the next one. Rarely do I get a complete vision of something before I begin to work on it.

I would invite anyone who has ever wondered where ideas come from to watch this video.

D.D.