A recent visit to the furniture collection at the Metropolitan Museum really emphasized how profoundly furniture-making has changed since my youth - and even in the 27 years since I founded TFWW.
I grew up reading Popular Mechanics, and I imagined that I too would engage in their home improvement projects when I grew up. Build a den; build a media center; build a kitchen cabinet; stuff like that. On top of that, the magazine offered tons of material on building reproductions of colonial style furniture, usually with the latest power tools. Home repairs, like car repairs, were within the grasp of ordinary people with mainstream skills and tools. DIYing was a popular hobby and for the average guy, (and I mean guy at this point in time) practical classes in Shop class in school gave you the foundation to make things.
I also began reading Fine Woodworking in 1976. (I missed the first two issues and started with Issue No. 3.) The magazine’s focus on fancy techniques like wood bending and a high valuation of the craft were real eye openers for me. Fast Forward to now. The major area of business for modern cabinet makers is in architectural woodworking - re-fitting kitchens, building interiors, stores, bookcases and other millwork. The popular expectation of dressers, tables, beds, etc. is inexpensive and disposable, made by IKEA and IKEA-like companies.
Fewer people now than ever before would consider themselves amateur woodworkers. The interesting part is that the ones who are doing it are doing it to a higher standard than ever before. They are no longer constrained by the mass market. If you’re going to the trouble of making a colonial style high boy, you’re probably doing it because you want to dive into that kind of piece, even if that means learning how to veneer, learning how to dovetail, learning how to carve details. All sorts of wonderful skills - which is where the challenge and interest lies.
Getting back to the museum: While the Metropolitan Museum of Art has the second largest collection of American furniture in the US (after Wintertur), most of the vernacular stuff they have is in the study collection, not in the fancy exhibition halls. The period rooms almost all have fancy rich furniture - items that highlight and show off wealth rather than comfort and function. The pieces are all beautifully made with great skill, but very few things are relatable nowadays. People aren't looking for a chair with fancy decorations and inlays. They want something that conjures up the image of a traditional chair - and the vernacular stick chair world does that in spades.
For most people interested in traditional skills, the direction seems not to copy the stuff in museums, but rather focus on the kinds of vernacular furniture that frankly was too downmarket to interest bigtime furniture collecting. I'm talking about stick chairs and other folk work. People are following this path for two reasons: first, while you need much fewer tools to make a stick chair, the craft demands the same rules of design and proportion so it’s still a fun challenge, and second, vernacular furniture is a lot more relatable in a modern house than the fancy furniture we see in museums.
Note: the Metropolitan Museum of Art has remounted a lot of works in their American Wing. They're mounting furniture in a way that asks you to look at it closely and see the details. They're trying to create an appreciation of the design of traditional furniture, or should I say, traditional high-end furniture that has largely vanished. I think a lot of people look at the furniture in the American Wing, and say, My word! That stuff looks dated! and never look past this unrelatability to the details. (This is especially true when whole rooms are preserved.) They therefore don’t enjoy or appreciate the craft that went into making fancy furniture. Of course the museum pieces were expensive luxury items. But they’re still wonderfully proportioned; they’re elegantly made; and a pleasure to examine and well. A lot of them don’t fit into a modern lifestyle, i.e. a place to put your laptop, a sofa you can watch TV from (and sadly nobody these days is coming over to play games). But this doesn't mean the works aren't extremely elegant in the context of their original use - and we can still learn from them.
Well said. I know ultra high-end work has its place, but for me, it does nothing.
03/04/2026 Joe Maday. IG #chipsordust
The met is great!...have not been there for quite some time, a visit in the near future for sure. I have been to Winterthur many times for some research on bandings. inlays and Seymour styles and was just at Yale's Furniture Study...we can learn so much from these "old brown" pieces....Craftsmanship, proportion, beauty of line...all still relate to modern designs.
03/04/2026 Michael Kellough
I always enjoy your posts but I think I spotted a typo in this one.
“in the 25 years since I founded TFWW.”
Pretty sure I bought stuff at your Manhattan location back in the 20th century. (Editor's Note: Fixed - we started 4/1/1999)
The good news is that trends can change and what is out of fashion today doesn't it won't ever be popular again. One related example I have is Sunday church. The younger generation is going to church in large numbers. Antique demand right now is low but doesn't mean it will always be that way. I learned how to woodwork in part so I could make furniture that I couldn't afford to buy.
As for playing games, my office at work has four of us in there. A colleague and I have been playing chess since 2019. He wins about 90% of the time but still I very much enjoy playing as the games are close. The games go much slower as we often only make one or two moves a day between the meetings. I point this out as it may be a way for others to continue to play classic games.
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“in the 25 years since I founded TFWW.”
Pretty sure I bought stuff at your Manhattan location back in the 20th century. (Editor's Note: Fixed - we started 4/1/1999)
As for playing games, my office at work has four of us in there. A colleague and I have been playing chess since 2019. He wins about 90% of the time but still I very much enjoy playing as the games are close. The games go much slower as we often only make one or two moves a day between the meetings. I point this out as it may be a way for others to continue to play classic games.