I met Todd, my future husband, while we were both studying art at the Rhode Island School of Design in the mid 1960s. Before we were married, Todd moved to a bleak, unfurnished apartment in Cambridge, Mass. Neither of us liked the usual factory furniture, and we couldn’t afford better, so I bought some materials cut to size at the local lumberyard and made him a table as a present.

After we were married, I taught school for a year. Then for about five years Todd and I made appliquéd banners and wall hangings. We even made some giant ones for the Woodstock Festival, where, I’m told, people tore them down when it started to rain and made tents Out of them.

All the while, I continued to make furniture for us and for friends. My workshop was the basement, and I never had much in the way of tools. I remember that when I made my first chair, from a leather sling and a bunch of standard-size dowels, I had to buy a spade bit to make the holes. My mortiser was a $ 10 electric drill. I eyeballed the mortises, and when I put the pieces together, three legs were fine, but the fourth was twisted up about seven inches from the floor. I plugged and redrilled the bad holes, then slid the dowels back and forth until the chair was comfortable. Then I glued the dowels, cut them off and pinned them.

People seemed to like the chair, so I made a scale model and displayed it in a local bank window along with some sample swatches for the seat. I expected a lot of orders, and I did get two phone calls-one person wanted to know what kind of wood it was, the other one asked me if I was hiring any help. About that time, I -discovered the New Hamburger Cabinet Works, a co-operative shop whose members were mostly college graduates interested in alternative careers-in making useful things.

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