By Doris Athineos
Traditional Home Magazine, May 1999

The cocoa-colored Chippendale side chairs and crisply carved piecrust tables on display in museums around the country were once but timber in some craftsman's dimly lit workshop. Today's antiques were the crafts of yesteryear, but the art form lost ground around the end of the 19th century. Blame the Industrial Revolution for making "handmade" a suspect word. Another blow to artisans was the Modernism movement, which separated art from craft. Furniture functions, observed Modernists, who decreed that practical objects - craft - not be art.

Craftsmen, however, didn't disappear. They merely went undercover - allied with furniture companies and high-end designers, where they suffer no taint of being archaic or out of step with current taste.

Also often overlooked are the independent artisans who labor over choices of' wood, seeing to it that planks are true and handles sure. But some of them -- in the "Live Free or Die" state of' New Hampshire, no less -- have banded together to raise their visibility. The result is the New Hampshire Furniture Masters Association, which was formed in 1995. Unlike the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which adapted and promoted a distinctive style put forth by William Morris and others, the New Hampshire group is more akin to a medieval guild. Its members work on commission, and the furniture they create is often a reflection of the taste of both artist and patron.

The loosely knit group is trying to make its 24 craftsmen and women better known by holding furniture auctions at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord. And for home shoppers, there is a Web site -- www.furnituremasters.org. But what really grabs our attention is the work itself, with a level of excellence evident in every turning. Original (no two pieces are ever exactly alike), beautiful, functional, and affordable, these crafts are at home in traditional homes.

REISSUING THE CLASSICS
Tom McLaughlin earned degrees in mathematics and divinity before succumbing to his true passion-furniture making. "I had to give myself permission to work with my hands," says McLaughlin as he scrapes a draw knife across a mahogany leg.

In McLaughlin's light-filled workshop in Canterbury, New Hampshire, the scent of freshly cut lumber fills the air. Robed in a leather smock, he seems at home preaching the virtues of fine traditional wooden furniture. "I'm tapping into the age of the greatest furniture designs," he says. "A Goddard--Townsend kneehole desk sets the standard for beauty, proportion, and design. Get up very, very close, and walk around the back. You will never be disappointed."

McLaughlin's Queen Anne-style highboy has a similar allure. It's a wonder how the muscular chest made of solid mahogany stands on such delicate ankles and tiny feet. Last year, the tower of drawers was auctioned in Concord for $7,920. If you add the cost of the wood (mahogany, tulip poplar, and cherry) plus the 300 hours it took to build, McLaughlin didn't make much, but still he's pleased. Furnituremaking is a calling, he says: "No one really expects to get rich."

When a visitor praises the workmanship, he credits the wood. "It's made from a single mahogany plank," he says matter-of-factly. But it was McLaughlin who rubbed the mahogany grain so smooth that swirling eddies appear to rise dangerously close to the surface. His mentor, Pug Moore of North Carolina, taught McLaughlin how to recognize the difference between great and merely good furniture. "It's all about harmonious balance and line," explains the mathematical-minded McLaughlin, who first lays out his designs using a ruler and compass. "What good is great construction if the design isn't there?"

McLaughlin takes pride in reissuing the classics, but even tradition is a regional thing. Chippendale and Queen Anne styles made of mahogany and walnut are popular in Virginia and North Carolina, while in New England, Federal and Shaker styles made of lighter woods (curly maple and cherry) reign. "Traditional furniture is just like classical music," says McLaughlin. "Both have been around forever, but particular musicians and composers are a matter of taste." He revives the classics, and in his hands, tradition is safe for it couple of hundred years more.

TURNING COFFEE BEANS INTO STONE Scott Schmidt's notebook isn't filled only with breezy pencil sketches of tables and chairs. It also contains his secret recipe for making stone. After watching a cupful of leftover epoxy turn rock hard 10 years ago, Schmidt was inspired to stir up his own paste. Like an alchemist, he concocted a brew of epoxy, volcanic ash, sawdust, mica chips, crushed walnut shells, and ground coffee beans, among other ingredients. Then he slathered the goo on birch plywood and, after it dried, sanded it smooth.

His piece de resistance is the set of tables above. With the tables' gently curved tops reminiscent of an arrowhead, the style is Navajo meets Arts and Crafts.

The furniture is art imitating nature. "I'm just replicating the process that took place eons ago, when volcanic ash turned into stone," says Schmidt, a graduate of Boston's North Bennet Street School, one of the few schools in the country devoted solely to teaching crafts. He lets nothing go to waste or pass through his hands unaltered. The table's sturdy black legs are made of blackheart, a tropical "junk" wood usually used to make shipping crates. He bound the legs together with hemp cord.

An inveterate collector, he stuffs the drawers of his Portsmouth studio with "anything affected by time" --scores of rusty straight razors, bird bones, feathers, rope, string, seed pods, driftwood, flint, lizard skin, and more. "The collection gives me inspiration for bigger ideas," says Schmidt. The pitted surface of flint, for example, inspired the texture of the tabletop.

Some of his best designs have happened by accident. The black jagged lines in the tabletop surfaced after he added too much ash to the epoxy mix. "The ash created dry pockets that look like the cracks and fissures in stone," he explains. Even bad accidents become a source of creative inspiration. Five years ago, Schmidt severed three fingers on his left hand. The fingers were reattached, and he regained almost full use of them. ("About the only thing I can't do is braid my daughter hair.") He thought about finding a different profession, but first he wanted to give flight to some of his furniture fantasies. "It's always an economic struggle to move from strictly commissions to more speculative work," says Schmidt, "but the accident woke me up. It was now or never." That's when he began to build tables using homecooked stone.

And furniture fans have taken note. Schmidt's creations are scheduled to appear in the prestigious Barry Friedman Gallery in Manhattan in September. (Friedman is famous for spotting trends early.) Made in collaboration with Ed Weinberger, a wenge-and-pearwood table is on display through May. (Look for the high-top table in the shape of a hulking praying mantis.)

CHASING DREAMS
Childhood daydreams led Sam Chase to pursue his interest in cabinet in making. "In junior high, my favorite class was shop," says Chase. He majored in geology at Harvard and prospected for gold in the Rockies before settling on a career as a maker of fine traditional furniture in Canterbury, New Hampshire.

"I like the whole process of making furniture, even sweeping up," says Chase, another North Bennet Street School alumnus. "It takes different brain levels."

"I start with a chain saw and rough lumber, and I end with inlay." Even the scent appeals. "I love the smell of walnut," he says. "It reminds me of my cousin's ranch in Montana."

But to get his creative juices flowing, Chase needed a patron. In stepped Catherine Rodrigue, an English and history teacher at St. Paul's School in Concord. "I knew I wanted a chest with four graduated drawers and dark and light woods; the rest we figured out together," says Rodrigue, who was surprised to learn that she could afford a custom-made mahogany chest on a teacher's salary.

What impressed her even more was the beauty deep within. The back is made of loosely fit vertical boards that expand and contract with the change of season. "I notice the dovetails and how smoothly the drawers open and close," she says.

The triangular dovetail joint, named for the shape of a dove's tail, was invented in the 17th century when drawers became lighter and more refined. "If you hand-cut dovetails, you call bring them to a delicate point," says Chase. "The pins are narrow and pointy while the tails are wide. They're usually not evenly spaced." Finely cut dovetails typify high-quality work, which is achieved by hand cutting rather than a router. With machine-cut dovetails, the fat pins are usually the same size as the tails.

So awed by the chest was Rodrigue that she commissioned Chase to build another piece. "It wasn't just the craftsmanship," she admits. "I was able to watch how the piece was made I like the story that goes along with it."

SUBLIME SPLINES
Age-old joinery doesn't have to result in a traditional look. Take the shapely demilune pier table with slender inward-arching legs, above, made by Ted Blachly. The striated bubinga wood grain looks like cinnamon streusel drizzled atop coffeecake. A skinny strip of rosewood peeks out from the center of the bulging drawer. Known as a spline, the thin black line marks the curve's apex like air exclamation mark. "The best way to hide a joint is to accentuate it with a spline," says Blachly. The self-described "detail nut" makes simply sensuous furniture in the Danish Modern style from his basement workshop in the home he built himself in Warner.

Blachly shies away from fancy inlay and carving. He prefers to let the woods natural beauty shine through. "I don't like furniture that's really noisy," the soft-spoken artisan says. Like a Ming-dynasty cabinetmaker, he strives for simplicity. Rippling wood grain flows across the surface and cascades down the long slender legs, an effect more fetching than gilding or inlay.

His tables are held together by mortise-and-tenon joinery and hand-cut dovetails that fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. "It will never fall apart," assures Blachly. "I'll be overjoyed when it gets bumped and scratched and starts to develop a soft patina."

The father of two gave up renovating homes 10 years ago to pursue furnituremaking full time. The more furniture he makes, however, the slower he becomes. "You learn to take the extra step," says Blachly, who constructs full-size pine models of new designs before sinking his saw into costly cherry, walnut and bubinga. He must be doing something right. So far, Blachly has been commissioned to make three versions of the pier table for different clients. Recently the table caught the eye of' gallery owner Warren Eames Johnson of Pritam & Earnes in East Hampton, Long Island, where it will be displayed through May.