But I got to the point where it was also sort of a management nightmare. I enjoyed the hands-on work, you know, actually physically manipulating materials, but after I got established, all I was really doing was running a crew. And I wasn't very happy with that. So I gave it up and I started making cabinets, and that gradually evolved into furniture making, which I've been doing professionally for about fifteen years now.

I consider myself a studio furniture maker, which isn't a term I made up--it's a tradition. Basically, a studio furniture maker is someone who has a small operation where they're doing custom making of one-of-a-kind, low production kinds of things. Mostly, I do tables. People always seem to need tables. But I'll make anything. I've done benches, screens, cabinets, sideboards, buffets, almost everything.

Some of the things I produce are speculative--where I generate the design purely by myself and then the pieces are shown in galleries and shows. Those are not directly lucrative. I also do a couple of craft shows every year. They're usually weekend shows where you set up a booth for the public and man it and display a number of pieces. And they produce a certain amount of interest, but furniture is one of the harder things to sell in that kind of venue because it's a big ticket item and people don't buy it impulsively. What sells best in craft shows are personal objects, you know, jewelry and ceramics. People can spend fifty dollars and not think much of it. If they get it home and they aren't really happy with it, they can stick it in the closet. But with a piece of furniture, you have to live with it. So usually, you don't make that many sales at the show. You're more interested in making contact and giving people an opportunity to implant in their minds that this is what you do and what it looks like, so they can get a sense of the quality and the aesthetic. Most of my business comes from word of mouth commissions. And what those are is problem solving. The client presents you with a problem and you solve it. That doesn't mean I can't have a fair amount of aesthetic influence, but I'm not going to make a rocking chair for someone who needs a bookcase.

I once--and this turned out to be a very good job--I once met a woman at a party and she asked me what I did and I told her and she was so excited, and she said, "I have to get in touch with you. I want you to make a bench so I can put my stockings on in the morning." She said, "It's so ludicrous to set on the edge of the bed and put your stockings on." And I thought, "Well, okay, that's a pretty bizarre request. A stocking bench." Personally, I didn't think anything would come of it. I thought it was just party talk and she would just disappear. But sure enough, she called me and I designed the bench for her. I gave it sort of an African quality. The legs are fairly massive in shape, a little bit like the gongs that are used in African music, and it's made out of Bubinga, an African wood. And that bench has actually won awards. It has been very successful.

There's a lot of furniture out there that functions poorly. And as a custom designer, you can correct that. I mean, if you're designing for industry, you're designing for some average standard--the average human, whatever that is. But I can design for, say, a small woman. So maybe the standard desk for the average person is twenty-nine inches. Well, a small woman sits at the desk and her feet are always off the floor and she's always uncomfortable. But I can accommodate her particularly--I can lower the desk three inches. That's part of what I'm offering. That, and whatever aesthetic skill I have. I mean, my desk isn't just going to be lower, it's going to look good.

I'm completely self-taught. I didn't have any training except reading and experimentation. That's not unusual, though--there are a lot of self-taught furniture makers and always have been. These days, there are also an awful lot who have academic degrees. I mean, there are college programs for this (laughs). But there isn't really anything new or groundbreaking within furniture making right now. There have been periods when it was sort of the hot medium in the craft tradition, but I would say at the moment, glass has probably eclipsed it. That's just the nature of how one medium eclipses another and becomes more fashionable. It's been a while since wood was what you might call the hot medium. I'm fifty-three years old and there are certain furniture makers who are now either dead or considered the masters, the old men, and in their time, it was to some extent the hot medium. But it's not anymore, although I don't really care.

I prefer working alone. It's not the most efficient way, but it gives me a level of control and a lot of what I'm doing has an element of it that's experimental for me and I need to pay attention and concentrate on that. I have employed people occasionally, but I usually end up needing to pay pretty strict attention to them, unless I have someone whose level of skill is close to my own, who can pretty much work unsupervised, which is very hard to get because I don't have the out-put to keep a skilled person busy. So when I have someone else in the shop, I find that I have to pay attention to not only what I'm doing, but also to what they are doing. So, then my out-put drops. It's sort of a Catch-22.

My operation is self-supporting, but there is not a lot of excess in it. Compared with other crafts, the shop cost for a furniture maker is fairly high. Equipment is a major investment. I've got a lot of machines--two saw tables, a long saw, a planer, joiner, a drill press, a lathe, and a band saw--all big pieces of equipment and they're all pretty costly.

And I've got insurance and liabilities. Machinery is dangerous. I had an injury to my hand several years ago. I cut it on a table saw. And then there are long-term safety issues like exposure to dust, so I have a dust mask and vacuums on certain machines. Then also, I have respirators to deal with solvents and things. And then there's sound--you know, hearing protection. And there's eye protection. A lot of liabilities.

I also have some allergies to some woods. I have a mild respiratory response to mahogany and an extreme one to Brazilian rosewood, because when I cut my hand, I basically inoculated myself with rosewood. So now I can't use it. If I ever do, I break out in an amazing rash--there's this swelling, especially on my face and round my eyes, and there's a sort of weepy exit coming out of my pores. It's pretty awful. And this is not uncommon in my profession.

But I'm not complaining; I find this work very satisfying. I love the craft, the designing, just working with wood. Actually, I have a sort of complicated relationship with wood. It involves lots of levels. One of the things that is attractive about wood is its relative warmth compared to other materials. I think that is at least partly because wood is an organic material, but it's also due to some of its tactile qualities like the color and the grain. And you want to use these aspects of it to be expressive when you are actually making pieces. For instance, by matching grains, you can convey an awful lot. The way you make the direction of the grain in the boards run when you put them together can have a feeling of support or a sense of carrying weight. Then there are also limitations to wood, just inherent in the nature of what it is. I mean certain shapes don't lend themselves to furniture. And sensitivity to that is important in terms of the subtlety that a piece can have. People may not recognize it consciously, but it still impacts on them.

Some woods are not good for furniture. They grow in such a way that the grain is too twisty or they don't machine well. So certain woods have traditionally been used as furniture woods. Maple, cherry, walnut, oak--these are standards. They are all very nice to work with. They all machine well. But then there are fruit woods that are grown in order to produce fruit and they are kept small and gnarly so they don't have big boards. So even though some, like apple, pear, or pecan, make very nice furniture woods, they are oftentimes hard to get. Then there are some woods that don't lend themselves to furniture at all. They are too brittle, too weak, don't machine well. I can't think of any of the top of my head because I don't use them (laughs).

And there are some woods that I don't use for environmental reasons, because of the harvesting practices. I stay away from certain types of mahoganies and certain teak woods because you are just encouraging deforestation when you use them. I am a member of a woodworker's organization that is working towards certification of woods and education about those issues. It's something I'm quite concerned about. But at the same time, I feel that on the level that I'm using wood, I don't represent a significant depleter of the world's forests. I mean, I'm not a paper mill. Even if I stopped making furniture, it would be of little consequence considering the volume of wood I consume. And I also think that the value that I add by the work that I do with the wood makes it worthwhile. If anybody should be able to use the wood it should be studio furniture-makers. They are the ones who are giving good value for what the wood represents.

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