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While I was in high school in Albany, New York, and in college at St. Michael’s in Winooski, Vermont, I worked during the summers with my grandfather in Schodack, New York, doing masonry and carpentry. My father was developing a swim club and picnic area and as part of that my Grandfather and I built a dinosaur that was 18 feet high and 25 feet long out of reinforcing rods, wire mesh and concrete, as part of the children’s play area within the club. I enjoyed working with my grandfather and this became a good experience in building and learning about materials and design. I began drawing and painting at this time as well. Having earned a bachelors of arts in science, I taught school in NY for a year and then joined the Army. After 3 years of service, I came back to Burlington, Vermont and renovated houses. I rented a small shop to build cabinets for the houses and quickly became interested in designing and building furniture and I began spending all my time in the shop.
One of my first furniture designs was the Vermont Folk Rocker (for which I was granted a patent) followed by many dining chairs, stools, couches, tables, dressers, all kinds of custom work and kitchens. I learned many of the finer points of woodworking from Lewie Johnson, one of my first employees. In the next 15 years we made hundreds of pieces of furniture.
In 1990 I moved my shop to Starksboro and stopped making the huge variety of furniture and custom work and decided to concentrate on making the Rocker. I think of all the prior work, and all the skills learned and knowledge gained as being distilled into one product, the Vermont Folk Rocker. The photos below show some of the pieces made over the years as well as some paintings.
See our products page to see what we are making these days.
Thanks,
Jim
