Kitchen Designs By Jennifer Gilmer
6 November 2008
“Nocturne”
One of the things that most surprised me when I started rubbing shoulders with cabinetmakers was learning how many of them don’t particularly care for interior designers. The most of them, my friends say, just specify the cabinets they want, then demand a kickbac
k for the “favor” of having been included in the kitchen project. And since cabinetmakers tend to spend an unseemly portion of their waking hours looking for ways to cut costs, giving away 10% of the job just has such a revolting aspect to it. And, to add insult to injury, the bulk of designers do nothing to really warrant that 10% kickback—didn’t design the cabinets, and certainly didn’t build them! It’s just a shakedown.
Quite frankly, there are far too many designers who work like that. They collect a fee based on their artistic abilities in this regard, but in the end, they simply pick out nice ca
binets, nice stoves, and the like. Despite their job title, they don’t actually design anything. They just coordinate the pieces and hit up all the suppliers involved in the project for a kickback. And then they have the audacity to collect a design fee from their clients! But I digress.
I really came to the subject of today’s blog because I was looking for innovative kitchen designs that were made by Americans, as opposed to the European kitchens I’ve written about so extensively. And given what I’ve just said about the dearth of designing actually being done by designers, I was just astonished to discover that Jennifer Gilmer Kitchens and Baths is, in fact, a design firm. Where they differ from most, though, is that they actually design their projects. No, that’s like saying Babe Ruth hit a home run once in a while. What these people do (it’s a whole staff of people—not just one person with a clever website and a business card) is create designs that are nothing short of spectacular.
For as often as I have said it, still, I must say it again. What I most look for in kitchen design is something different from what has gone before. And it’s a tough nut to crack, because a kitchen is such a functional room. A living room, by way of contrast, is very much a blank slate. They come in all sizes and shapes and can be made to work at any number of levels. But a kitchen has all those items we actually need to prepare the meals which m
ust be arranged just so, if the cooks are not to continually bang into each other. But for all of the challenges a kitchen design presents, still, we want something spectacular in that room. Enter Jennifer Gilmer Kitchens and Baths.
As I fumbled with the wording for this blog, the radio started a Chopin Nocturne. Kismet. There is such a seamless grace in this piece, which is just what one would ideally like to see in the relationship between designer and cabinetmaker. The truth is that every cabinetmaker designs—must if he is to do his job correctly—but it is rare for the man who makes the sawdust to come up with the really soaring designs that just take your breath away. And those who design normally don’t get their hands much dirtier than an occasional pencil smudge. It’s because there are two worlds, really: the person who proposes, who looks for ways to push the envelope, to take a design where it has not gone before. And then there is the person who makes it possible, or who occasionally requests a design modification to ensure its practicality. But when you have an innovative design created by an honorable person who works with a superior cabinetmaker, you have a seamless merging that is artistic and sound, something that just makes you ache with its sheer beauty. Kind of like a Chopin Nocturne.
Joseph
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