Five Generations Deep
My name is Robert, and I build furniture and cabinetry out of my home shop in Galloway, New Jersey.
Woodworking runs in the family, five generations of it. My father, James, was a carpenter. So was my Grandfather, John, and his father and grandfather before him, back as far as we still have records. They were union men who framed and finished and built things that had to last. My father put power tools in my hands by the time I was seven or eight, probably younger than he should have. I grew up around the smell of cut wood and the sound of a saw. Somewhere along the line it stopped being the thing the men in my family did and became the thing I do.
Built by Hand, Designed to Last
A lot of people come to this work from one direction - the tradesman who builds by feel and experience, or the engineer who can run the numbers but has never built a thing. I had both from the start. I learned the science alongside the craft, not one and then the other.
I'm an engineer, and I spend my time around aviation piston engines, where a few thousandths of an inch decide whether something runs or tears itself apart. That precision isn't a thing I switch off when I walk into the shop.
It matters more than it sounds. Wood isn't a static material; it moves, swelling in summer and shrinking in winter, fighting the seasons for as long as it stays a board. Build a piece without designing for that and it will crack itself apart within a year. Plenty of furniture does. The difference between a table that lasts fifty years and one that splits its first winter isn't the finish or the joinery you can see, it's whether the person who built it understood the material well enough to let it move. I do.
Built to be Handed Down
Every piece I make is built to order, by hand, one at a time. The right material for every part, and joinery built to last.
If you've got something in mind - a table, a vanity, a built-in, or a piece you can't find anywhere else - I'd love to hear about it.