I Make What You Want

My training has been a lifetime of experience. In 5th grade my teacher realized I had an abundance of energy and invited me to help around the school stage where I began the journey of making most anything. I continued stage crew throughout junior and senior high school and I became manager for two years. After college in Ohio and Colorado I went back to the stage and worked professionally until (after a hectic week which was all too common) I changed direction towards creating everyday items. I enrolled in Leeds Design Workshop, a furniture school in western Massachusetts. For two years 20 students learned how to build furniture using traditional European joinery. But more than that we learned about “quality of craftsmanship”.

In 1980 I moved to the DC area and began my business. My specialty (traced back to the variety of odd items produced for stage performances) quickly took the direction of bringing my client’s woodworking projects to life. I think it is important to bring out the features of the existing environment without my personal style influencing design decisions - I make what you want. As a result of this business model I have successfully completed a large variety of projects; there are just as many ways to approach a project with me. Here are a few examples:

Drawings are provided:

Specifics are worked out, a price is set, the project is built and delivered! An architect/designer’s drawing of a single piece of furniture or an entire room can be brought to life. Or, a lawyer who loved to draw furniture supplied his detailed sketch for me to build his beautiful bookcase influenced from his travles to the southwest.

Create a new design after defining what the piece requires:

Tables with legs, cabinets to hold things, doors to close things, the list is everything in your house!

I designed the TV cabinet (on my contact page) to complement the round windows and the carpet motif of the room in which it was installed. This project started with sketches, followed by 3D computer drawings, a scaled model, and was finally built to completion. Another example of this are a bed and kitchen table for a family where the original ideas headed in an unexpected direction resulting in beautiful items for everyday use.

Working with other trades to technically work out the design problems presented:

I designed and built the necessary slides for the ark doors (seen on the architectural page) that were drawn curved, needed to slide sideways, did not have a straight edge where they met, and had two nestling pairs: the front wood doors and an inner steel and fabric door. I also custom created the latching and hinge hardware to enable the reading table lecturn to flip up for a height extension when needed.

Duplicating or matching existing furniture, trim, finish:

An example was to make an end table look like the clients bookshelf. Another client found a couple of broken drawers to go along with a front facade. I built the bedroom cabinet around those pieces.

Making items that are not exactly furniture:

I designed and built a bathroom faucet where the design required it to come out from the wall through a mirror. Or when Dr. Patch Adams was developing his Chautauqua medicine show, I created his traveling salesman showcase, something he could stand on to gather a crowd and then open to display his elixirs of life.

As you can see there is no direct path to the final product. Please call or bring me your project or dreams and together we will produce tomorrow’s antiques.