About Ian Maas, Kitchen Designer

I love food and all of the things that make up this most basic of human needs. Saving seeds; cultivating and improving soils; planting and growing; marketing; harvest and storage. I love to read about the history of foods, where they came from, who grew and improved them and why. I love to be driving down a back road and find  a tidy, reasonably scaled farm, settled into the landscape around it and you can just see the pride that can go into producing that most basic of human needs. And of course I love preparing and eating food!
 I grew up around up animals and large gardens on a small hippy homestead in Ohio. My parents were suburban escapees trying to get back in touch with what it takes to produce your own food. This stuck with me and I continued with it studying agriculture in school and for six years working on several small vegetable and dairy farms in Central Vermont.

To this day I do the same thing with my family that my parents worked towards and produce a lot of our own meat and vegetables on our own five acres of heaven in Central Vermont.

I came to kitchen design through this background. Actually it was total happenstance. I knew Sam Clark as a carpenter around the area and worked with him on some building projects. About eight years ago he asked me if I would like to work with him. He was putting together a shop and restarting his kitchen business and was looking for someone to work with. I had no shop experience at the time and when I mentioned this he said "perfect".

 Now eight years on and sixty or seventy kitchens later I have grown into the work and started understanding what goes into a great kitchen. How that space can be laid out to create a place that is a joy to work and socialize in. I bring to my ideas the kitchen of  a farmer, a family man, and most importantly a foodie! Meals made from scratch with potatoes dusty from the root cellar; nearly frozen brussle sprouts brought to the counter still muddy and snowy; and a roast spending a day in the oven warming the house. Large gatherings of friends and family, all in the kitchen crowding around the counters and surfaces, drinking, laughing, and comparing pot luck dishes. A day of canning and freezing with every burner going and every surface covered with jars and pans and spilled tomato juice. A foodies kitchen!

I decided to start this writing project to begin to categorize what I have learned working with Sam Clark about  kitchens and kitchen design. I will try to lay it out by category with comment, pictures and places for you the reader to join and help make this blog a clearing house of ideas for the kitchen loving foodies out there of all budgets. The categories will be, but not limited to, design and layout, drawers and doors, woods, counter materials, appliances, hardware types, finishes, flooring, sinks, shelving and budgeting.

Thanks for logging on helping us to reignite the hearth into our modern lives.