Don’t mean to single you out, but I made your acquaintance on another thread (not wanting to continue that one) and you said that you have your own custom furniture or woodworking business and I’m intrerested in your story. Tried to find your email but couldn’t on the site. Anyway, I work with a fifty-something female carpenter and she’s kind of an anomaly in the trade and a very sweet person. I don’t exactly know why I mention her except that there seems to be more ‘successful’ male woodworkers than female. (No I do not equate woodworking with carpentry . . .) I think that many of us would enjoy hearing more about your work and what you have done, and what has motivated you? If your’s is a successful business, well the value in those is going up! I know you are good with a keyboard. What do you say? I have spending a lot of time on knots lately becaue the wife and child are out of town . . . and I think this ‘business’ section is underused, don’t you?
Brian
Replies
While you are waiting for her reply you can go to the advanced search function and use the drop down box to select her name. There is a fair amount of background and some very interesting posts.
Prosperos search function has it's quirks but looking up a persons previous posts works pretty good.
To reach someone by e-mail click on their name and you will see an option to contact them or you can do a normal post and at the bottom you will see an option to reply via e-mail.
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You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Jack London
There is a fair amount of background and some very interesting posts.
Yes, and I remember one post having a link to her website - very nice work, definitely worth checking out.
Lee
Brian:
You're right there aren't many wood chicks and those you do find are probably as mouthy as me. Here's a bit of history on this girl's evolution in the furniture biz.
I graduated from the Kendall College of Art and Design with a degree in furniture design back in the old days when it was a certificate school. Spent 10 years designing furniture for H Miller and on one fateful vacation to Colorado found myself totally and completely captured by it's people and beauty. Well I went back to Michigan just long enough to quit my job, pack my stuff and hit the road in my old Dodge power wagon. The truck died just outside Denver and I hitched a ride with a guy driving a moving van and we talked about the only thing I knew (furniture) and he told me the company was looking for someone to do repairs on stuff that was damaged during long haul transport and things they ran into walls and doorframes. I talked with the guy's boss and he told me there were no girls in wood work so sort of like you experienced the other day I told him my thoughts on that and by the end of the day he had hired me! I worked for them for about a year and decided that the folks whose furniture I was repairing all seemed to have the ability to spend a fair amount on their furniture so I dsigned a couple pieces for one of the moving company's owners and he freaked and wanted both. So that lead to additional commissions and after a while they told me that I really needed to be designing and building instead of repairing so I made a deal to rent space in an empty building owned by the firm and went to work. I lived in that building designed and built anything and everything from nice furniture to display cabinets for a bakery, 65 coat stands for Vail ski area a couple fancy dog houses what ever I could to pay the bills.
I think the turning point was meeting a couple interior designers who were tired of working with guy craftsmen who treated them like dumb girls. Turns out these gals had some pretty high falootin clientele ( Aspen types), and things kind of went from there. For the past twenty years we've been furnishing some of the west's finest homes with custom designed furniture and some reproduction stuff. There are lots of Victorian era homes out here so much interest in furnishings that reflect the style.
Business has been built by word of mouth and I don't have a web site, yep I gotta do that one of these days! To be honest I'm just getting comfy with these computers so it'll likely be put together by someone other than me.
So there you have it the story of how one midwestern gal ran away from the norm and has done things her way for a good long time. Oh I should mention that I met hubby on a long bike ride through Rocky Mountain National Park. He didn't know girls knew how to use tools ( he was working on a framing crew building cabins in Estes Park) well one thing led to another and here we are making sweet sawdust together out here in God's country. Business is good life is good and I've got to get back to work. I picked up a commission to build a conference room table and 12 chairs for a group of attorneys in New Mexico and we don't want any irate attorneys do we?
See you around.
Madison
Great story. I'd like to see some of your designs sometime, whenever you can get around to it.Brian
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