Woodworkers Craft Stunning Furniture Around the Brandywine Valley
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Photos by Jim Morris
Local producers of bespoke handmade furniture are carving out a new image with eye-catching designs and an attention to detail.
Among the treasured images of times gone by is that of a furniture maker at work, a well-worn tool in hand, ishaping or smoothing a piece of raw wood, the shop floor littered with sawdust and shavings. These days, there are cabinetmakers still at work in their shops and studios across our region. Skilled professionals making high-quality bespoke pieces, they all share the same attention to detail. In lesser hands, a tool biting into wood could spell disaster.
Each artisan is different in vision and approach. It’s often where craft becomes art. “I had a customer who recently told me, ‘I need a chess table that can also be used as a desk,’” says Doug Mooberry.
Furniture maker Doug Mooberry amid the raw materials at a barn near his Unionville studio.
Mooberry and his team at Unionville’s Kinloch Woodworking took up the challenge, designing a table with an intricate inlay of dogwood flowers, matching chairs and even chess pieces. “I know the customer, and I know what he likes,” Mooberry says.
Honey Brook’s Josh Stoltzfus has found a niche making cedar chests and steamer trunks with dimensions and features that can be custom-ordered online. Matthew Blackburn recently moved his studio from West Chester to Philadelphia. As he awaits more clients, he’s focusing on millwork, the in-stock decorative materials used in building construction. In Media, Bok Read crafts chairs and tables that tend to visually twirl up from the floor as though the legs are dancing toward the light.
There are fewer artisans like these than ever before. And for those still at it, a trade that used to be about restoring antiques or copying period-style heritage pieces is changing.
Two standouts from Mooberry’s diverse portfolio.
After 13 years as an apprentice in a furniture-making studio, Allen Fulmer decided to strike out on his own in 2019. North of Phoenixville in Royersford, near the Schuylkill River, his Imoshen Studio specializes in Japanese-style daybeds and other furniture. “We recently made a complete traditional tea room inside a home in West Chester,” Fulmer says. “We also made interiors for a complete home for another client—all the millwork, cabinets, book cases, furniture, everything.”
Fulmer learned the fundamentals as an apprentice. “The thing that changed when I started my own business was to push myself further in my abilities,” he says. “In this case, it was learning the Japanese style of joinery in furniture making, a subject that intrigued me.”
In some ways, the technique is similar to the simpler post-and-beam construction. “While it’s used in timber framing, we scale it down to furniture-size levels,” Fulmer says. “It has superior strength and is built to last a lifetime.”
Mooberry estimates that about 95% of his work is done on commission, which makes good business sense. “You can’t always anticipate what people want,” he says. “Having pieces sitting in your showroom hurts cash flow.”
Like many furniture makers, Fulmer and his assistant do commissioned work and produce some pieces for online sale. Recent items include a modern Japanese desk for $8,970, a daybed with shoji (sliding panel) for $12,750 and a live-edge dining table for $14,500. While Fulmer uses native American wood for most of his furniture, he uses softer options like cedar and cypress for his Japanese work.
“People come to us with pages out of books and magazines, or they sketch something out,” says Fulmer. “But we never want to just copy what someone else has done. We draw inspiration, then come back with our own design.”
Doug Mooberry fell in love with furniture in shop class at his alma mater, Unionville High School. Upon graduation from Gettysburg College in 1982, he’d expected to go into the business world. “But there were absolutely no jobs,” recalls Mooberry over a cup of coffee at Farmer & Co., the coffee shop and market opened in 2021 by his daughter, Jessie, and her husband right next door to his studio.
A retired chemistry and physics teacher and former coach at Penncrest High School in Media, Bok Read is also a third-generation furniture maker. He even built the house he lives in.
After a summer working in extensive furniture collection at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and a brief internship with a local cabinetmaker, Mooberry set out on his own. His first two studios in Unionville and Avondale proved to be less than ideal, so he moved to his present site in 1987.
Now into his 60s, Mooberry has cultivated a multigenerational client base. “I just took an order from a third generation [client] for a fourth generation,” he says.
Mooberry estimates that about 95% of his work is done on commission, which makes good business sense. “You can’t always anticipate what people want,” he says. “Having pieces sitting in your showroom hurts cash flow.”
Furniture styles have changed over the years. Mooberry is now selling a lot of large tables outfitted with benches. “Benches are less-expensive than buying eight chairs,” he notes. “Since there’s no back on them, people can get out easily.”
Although there’s still a small market for furniture in the 18th-century style, Mooberry and others in the industry have seen declining enthusiasm for buying antiques and/or restoring them. “There’s a lot more interest in contemporary designs,” he says. “The guys in the shop all have great design sense. We bounce ideas back and forth. I might start with a sketch and say, ‘Here’s what I think. This is the budget. Can we do it, and how can we make it interesting?’”
Mooberry loves exotic wood and has squirreled away loads of it in his barn on a nearby property—and he isn’t thinking of retiring soon. “It’s still fun. I get to make amazing furniture and meet a lot of neat people,” says Mooberry. “When I call somebody on the phone, they’re always glad to hear from me.”
There are places where you can learn the basics of the woodworking. Challenge Program Furniture in Wilmington describes itself as “a social enterprise that makes handcrafted furniture for restaurant, office, retail and residential clients.” It also does furniture restoration. “We’ve been in business for 10 years, and we have six trainees each year,” says Andrew McKnight, CP Furniture’s founder and executive director.
Graduates don’t necessarily go into furniture making, though they often go into carpentry or construction. “We don’t do anything fancy like woodcarving,” McKnight says. “But we do have our own sawmill.”
And younger generations love custom-made furniture. “I’m always booked two to three months out,” Mooberry says. “People once thought that if you weren’t booked out two or three years, you must not be any good. Now, after Amazon, people want instant gratification—even with handcrafted furniture.”
Bok Read acknowledges that he’s a horrible businessman. “Most of my business is friends of friends, although recently it’s become friends of friends of friends.”
Read’s creations are as much sculptural as they are functional. He’s been in dozens of art and furniture shows, and his “swooping” pieces wouldn’t look out of place in a museum catalog.
A retired chemistry and physics teacher and former coach at Penncrest High School in Media, Read is also a third-generation furniture-maker. He even built the house he lives in. Read’s creations are as much sculptural as they are functional. He’s been in dozens of art and furniture shows, and his “swooping” pieces wouldn’t look out of place in a museum catalog. The footboards of one bed are interlocking panels, fluid like an ocean’s waves. “Beds are the most fun,” Read says. “The heads and the footboards have no functions—they are just wood. So I sometimes shape them to look like folded blankets.”
In Read’s hands, a table becomes a flat mesa perched atop branches growing up from tree roots. A chest is a blend of textured dark and blond woods, with paneled doors flowing in three dimensions. “I probably use curving chisels more than other craftsmen do,” he admits. “However, I’m not a big believer in using exotic woods.”
The hands of Read at work.
Read asks for plenty of input from clients. “We start with pictures,” he says. “Often, I’ll meet them at their house to see where it will be going. I’ve never had an assistant or apprentice, although my son sometimes helps me.”
And Read is also a huge fan of the source of his creations. “I do love trees,” he says. “I take an hour to walk in the woods every day.”
Visit kinlochwoodworking.com, cpfurniture.org, blackburnfurniture.com, imoshenstudio.com, amishhandcrafted.com and bokreadwoodworking.com.
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