Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/410828
A black piano is pushed into a little side nook, and a guitar sits atop a table. The New Orleans blues of Dr. John is rever- berating among the tools and in-progress projects as Cameron works. Stacks of leather-bound sketchbooks are filled with notes and ideas and drawings; another one might be tucked in his pocket. His wood block prints and metal engraving tools surround the microscope he uses to create the detailed engravings that embel- lish his work. A book will likely be sitting on his desk, too. Today, it's Freya Stark's 1934 travel memoir, The Valley of the As- sassins and Other Persian Travels, which, like all books, Cameron reads "for how it's written, how sentences are constructed, how a book feels." The same description could be applied to his work, which marries beautiful aes- thetics with masterful technique. Each line of each piece of his furniture is deliberate: Cameron wants a viewer's eyes to travel across a piece a certain way, whether it's sweeping along the concave shelves of an open cabinet or traveling to the center of a Japanese-inspired screen to focus on the wood's burl pattern. No detail is too small. Cameron remembers staring at one of his student pieces for days, trying to figu e out what was wrong with it, before realizing one of its edges was slightly too sharp. "Well-crafted pieces that aren't beautiful leave me cold," he says, peering through a pair of round metal glasses that he picked up in a junk shop somewhere, probably 25 years ago, he guesses. His fi - gernails are stained brown, thanks to the natural shellac he applies by hand to his 226 WALKING INTO THE GLOUCESTER WORKSHOP OF CABINETMAKER JOHN CAMERON IS A LITTLE LIKE ENTERING A WORMHOLE INTO HIS BUSY, BUZZING CREATIVE MIND. ONE WALL IS PAPERED WITH DETAILED PENCIL SKETCHES OF CHAIRS AND CHESTS OF DRAWERS. ANOTHER WALL IS A PATCHWORK OF BLACK- AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS OF KELP AND STARK- LOOKING TREE BRANCHES SET AGAINST A GRAY SKY. Cameron's workshop is festooned with drawings, books, and works in progress.