Stained ash spiral Staircase

This is a two-flight, 12' diameter circular staircase built of grain-matched white ash with a dark stain.

John Emmerling's Gearhart Ironwerks fabricated the mid-flight balusters and the wall-railing brackets.

We had the balustrade steel (non-structural) bent to a helix by a firm in Portland, then needed to hand-bend it in order to dial it in to a nice fit.

This has been a most fascinating and fulfilling project, demanding a wide range of experience, inspiration, head-scratching, and work, work, work! It is also fairly a study in minimalism, as there is not much more there than needs to be.

People frequently ask me what sort of high tech equipment I use to do all the calculations and measurements for this sort of thing, and the truth is I do use a very sophisticated piece of equipment, one that always give a true reading, never needs batteries, and has been around for a very, very long time, used by cultures the world over. It is called a plumb bob.