the story of maki talo...
What my Finnish American friend Mike Macki created with love and pride was a spectacular example of contemporary Finnish-American architecture. The crowning Finnish touch was the use of a birch tree for support on the porch. Everyone loves it. Everyone loves to run their hands over the smooth, muscular tree trunk as if it were the hand of God...and it is.
George Nakashima, "The Elder Statesman of the American Craft Movement," who designed and crafted furniture from 1940-1990 stated that, "A tree is our most intimate contact with nature."
After watching "Alone in the Wilderness" on PBS TV so many times over the years that I have it memorized, I was obsessed with building my own cabin. And I had spent a couple vacations in the mountains of Idaho, staying in quaint, rustic cabins and observing many more tucked in the nooks and crannies of the mountains where I became inspired.
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the materials and a vision...
In 2005, my brother Donald was thinning a stand of red pine trees that I helped plant some 50 years ago, so I asked him to select and cut some logs 14 feet long, which were as long as I thought I could handle. After I peeled the bark from the logs with a drawshave and old car spring they remained piled up for two years while I wondered how I would tackle the project.
Then one spring day in 2007, I ran into Mike Macki, who told me that he was taking the summer off from logging as the wood industry was in a depression and he decided to free lance his way until things improved. It was then that I decided that I was unable to do the log cabin by myself and asked him to help me. We started brainstorming about such a log building and what it could be like. We both became excited about the project and started the ball rolling.
There were no complicated architectural plans to work on or from. We had a vision and would make the decisions as we went along.
the construction begins...
That first summer Macki scribed and chiseled out the saddle cut corners on the logs. Since the building site in the forest was not ready, we built the basic log cabin shell in my yard. We would move it into the woods the next summer.
During the summer of 2008, Macki and I dismantled the log cabin in my yard and moved it log-by-log to the wooded building site which had been prepared with a concrete slab. We re-assembled the logs into a cabin on the slab like a super-sized set of Lincoln Logs. An over-sized roof was built over the cabin and side shed and covered with green steel roofing to blend into the environment. A door and two windows were cut into the logs and windows were cut into the gable ends. Windows were installed. Macki fashioned a wooden door out of thick cedar planks recycled from the house his grandfather built.
The cedar trees were 265 years old when sawed down in the 1920s. The decorative door hinges and thumb latch were hand-forged by Dale Burton of Knife River, Minnesota, who hammered them out of raw steel on an anvil after heating the metal to red hot in his forge. The logs were stained outside and inside and chinked with Log Jam.
The exterior gable ends were covered by cedar shakes hand-split by Macki with a froe and wooden mallet. Two flat rocks found by Macki on a logging road on the property were placed as steps to the cabin.
the interior...
The interior is furnished with items hand-made by Macki. The table-top and benches were also crafted from the recycled cedar planks. Table and bench legs were fashioned from blue beech trees harvested by Macki in his own woods. An old black pot-bellied stove is the source of heat for the cabin. I hand-forged the decorative stove poker.
A gas light fixture supplies light when needed. A log ladder-type stairs goes up to a sleeping loft with a row of clerestory windows furnishing a sweeping view of the outdoors. Amish-made Adirondack chairs and Aldo Leopold benches that I made provide seating on the covered porch, the focal point of which is a twig porch swing created by Macki.
maki talo in its beauty...
The log based structure may look small and simple but an incredible amount of engineering and know-how went into its construction. Macki's lifetime of experience was required to put it all together. Craftsmen with such skills are becoming rare and hard to find these days.
Macki placed slip-joints in the window and door frames and log jacks in the porch posts to allow for settling of the logs as they dry out over time. A compression foam-type product was installed above the windows and door to also allow for settling of the logs.
The cabin is sited on a little glacial hill in the middle of a stand of red pines surrounded by mature maple and oak trees. Balsam and white birch trees are interspersed. Several large rocks complete a scene reminiscent of Finland.
The site is but a stone's throw from the homestead of Matt Kuusisto, the first Finnish settler in Brantwood, who purchased the 40 acres in 1900 for $240. Kuusi is Finnish for "spruce tree".
the crafters and contributors...
Macki's great grandfather Elias Maki, immigrated to this country from Finland at the turn of the last century. Because of the confusing large number of Maki's in the area his grandfather Jim Maki added a "c" to the name to make it Macki, and thus distinctive. There would be no more annoying mail mix-ups.
Macki learned the trade of log building construction working with master log house builders in Idaho and out west where they built mansions out of huge logs.
Macki and his wife Deb live in a house he handcrafted out of massive white pine logs in 2000 in an area known as the Willow Region, where his maternal grandparents settled during the depression in 1932. The house is filled with furniture and other objects that he made with his hands. An assortment of game birds and animals that he mounted himself adorn the rooms. A Finnish sauna in the basement provides the perfect place for him to relax and unwind at the end of his busy days.
One day another of my uber-talented Finnish-American woodworking friends, Ed Hinsa, stopped by. As I was showing him the partially constructed cabin I put my hand on one of the built-in log shelves and asked him, "Ed, do you know what will be placed here?"
He said "No, what?"
I said, "A clock made by you!"
I was pleasantly surprised by his response, "What kind of clock?" I responded with, "Whatever you think is appropriate."
I could immediately see the wheels turning in his head as his brain started pondering what type of clock would be appropriate in a log cabin. After a period of time he announced his vision of a clock. He remembered traveling to the Adirondacks many years ago and falling in love with the birch bark and twig trimmed furniture in the lodges and cabins out there. He would make a clock out of Baltic birch wood, cover it with birch bark and trim it with twigs. The movement would be mechanical German brass with chimes. No quartz in that clock or cabin.
I went out into the woods with my utility knife, harvested some white birch bark, dried it in a makeshift press and gave it to Hinsa to make the clock.
Hinsa is a self-taught woodworker specializing in building furniture and especially clocks, for which he is well-known.
Sharing the shelf with the birch bark clock are birch bark baskets made by a local lady, Kathy Ninneman, about 35 years ago when she worked on the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation. The baskets demonstrate a variety of weaving and decorating styles and techniques.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for all the people who were involved in the construction of the cabin. Bill Hoffman, the owner and host, used Fiskars scissors (of course) to cut the ribbon. Macki put away his cabin-building cap, put on his chef's hat and prepared a sumptuous feast of assorted wild game including alligator that he himself bagged in the swamps of Louisiana. In honor of the occasion Rod Maki and June Saari Johnson of Finn Power wrote and performed a song about the cabin titled, "Maki Talo".
Visiting the site while composing the song, many thoughts ran through Saari-Johnson's head: "Maki Talo has been built with special attention to nature, providing peace and tranquil isolation. This is a place to stop running and listen to the Music of the Spheres."
Music of the Spheres or Musica universalis is an ancient philosophical/mathematical concept, possibly originated by Pythagoras, that music is related to the movements of the sun, moon and planets. This concept regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies, and the structure of nature in general as a form of music. This "music" is not literally audible, but simply a harmonic and/or mathematical concept.
Today, as one sits on the porch of Maki Talo contemplating the beauty and uniqueness of it all, from the best of God and nature to the best of men--two fine Finnish-American craftsmen--the tranquility of it all is broken only by the sweet sounds of the German brass chimes counting out the hours as they all too quickly pass by.
directions...
Maki Talo - Hill House is located in Brantwood, the center of Finnish settlement once known as Uusi Savo, in north central Wisconsin, and can be seen by appointment only.
For more information or to make an appointment, please call Bill Hoffman at:
Phone: (715)564-2253 Email: cyrilla@centurytel.net