Category: Little Acorns: Profiles by Nancy Hiller

Along with her colleagues at Fine Woodworking magazine, Associate Editor Anissa Kapsales decamped from Taunton headquarters in Newtown, Conn., to her home in Upstate New York this March. Her office for the past several weeks has been her kitchen table, which she shares with her children, ages 9 and 10. Each has a designated area. She works, they study.

For fun they’re conducting an archeological dig in the backyard, complete with tape to keep curious (if imaginary) visitors a safe distance from the site. A couple of years ago the family dog, Bongo, killed an unlucky groundhog. After scolding Bongo, Anissa dug a grave and buried the deceased. Now that her kids have to get their kicks at home, she figured digging up the bones and putting them back together would be a creative educational venture.

The youngest of three siblings, Anissa grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Penn., where her father, George Kapsales, was a mechanical engineer. Mr. Kapsales designed production lines for Dana Perfumes, a cosmetics company that produced fragrances such as “Canoe,” “Ambush” and “Tabu.” In the evenings and on weekends he tinkered in the family’s basement or on one of his many jalopies, and Anissa liked nothing better than to hang out with him while he built furniture or components for major home repairs, a portable black and white TV always on in the background. “To this day,” she says, “I love the background sound of football games, and the smell of second-hand smoke. He was never without a cigarette.”

Anissa’s mother, Anastasia Kapsales, has spent most of her career as a master seamstress who had a designer jeans store in the ’80s, at the height of the designer jeans movement, and alterations shop. “She could make anything, all the way up to wedding gowns,” Anissa says. “She’s a fantastic seamstress. She still works now, in her 80s.”

As soon as she had her driver’s license, Anissa made a habit of visiting her father at Dana Perfumes, where they’d have lunch together. “The building was just super cool,” she says, “built in the early ’60s, so the architecture and office furniture were fantastic. It had a lot of glass and a giant ‘D’ sculpture in front.”

Whenever his employer was getting rid of stuff, George would take it home and put it in the basement. This is how the Kapsales family came to own such diverse artifacts as “a giant photocopier,” speakers, rubber and cork bottle stoppers and a collection of leftover balls from roll-on deodorant. Because you never know when a 6′-long commercial stainless steel lab sink from 1979 might come in handy.

Anissa and her now-former husband grew up in the same town and went to the same high school, though they didn’t know each other at the time. They met when she visited the outdoor outfitters shop, where he happened to be working, to buy a pair of hiking boots. Over the intervening years she’d worked a variety of jobs – lifeguard, waitress, bartender, juvenile detention center guard – and continued college, majoring in English with a specialization in creative writing/poetry. After attending a few colleges, including the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the University of Colorado-Boulder, Anissa finally graduated from East Stroudsburg University in 1999 when she was 30, and moved to the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York, where her partner was living. She took a job as manager of the rental shop at Hunter Mountain ski resort and did a brief stint as a rock climbing guide. They bought a 1915 house in a small town in the Hudson Valley and settled into married life.

Planning to become a teacher, Anissa started work on a master’s in education through SUNY-New Paltz. At the same time, she taught eighth grade full-time at a public middle school in the Bronx, a 90-minute commute each way, to generate income while her husband built up his outdoor guide business. Describing the school, she says, “There were armed guards at the door. It was pretty rough. I had about 35 kids in every class. There were some really bright kids, some troubled kids. For a first-time teacher, it was trial by fire. You really got put in the hot seat fast. It was an intense environment to walk into having only substitute-taught. My principal and vice principal were super supportive, strong New York City women. But in the end, you’re in the classroom yourself with 35 kids. They were tough. It was a challenging environment.”

Nicholas and Despina Barounis, Anissa’s maternal grandparents

Anissa’s father died in February 2002. Devastated, she quit the master’s program and couldn’t bring herself to go back to teaching in the Bronx. “I just kind of didn’t work for a few months,” she says. But her grief, which was inextricable from her memories of those years in the basement with her father, sparked an epiphany. One day as she awoke from a nap, it popped into her head that she had a friend, Sandie, whose neighbor, Eric Keil, was a woodworker. (You can see Eric’s work on Instagram at @baldmountainwoodworks.) She thought: “I need to ask Sandie if she’ll talk with Eric about taking me on as an apprentice.”

“I just knew,” she recalls.

Sandie asked. Eric said yes. Anissa spent a few months working with him. “He was fantastic,” she says. “So smart. He had been had been in Fine Woodworking; he’d worked with Mark Schofield. I knew there were woodworking magazines out there but didn’t really know specifically about Fine Woodworking until I worked with Eric in the summer of 2002.”

That fall she took a job teaching sixth-grade English and ancient history at a Quaker school in Poughkeepsie. “I was able to run with both subjects at the same time. I learned the history part as I went. It was all really interesting. Ancient Greece, ancient China, Mesopotamia. All the religions. I was able to do an English curriculum that tied into them and then we would tie current events into them. It was really fun.”

The school had a shop; one of her fellow teachers suggested they take a Shaker hall table class at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. That summer, they did.

Bob Van Dyke, who runs the school, shared this memory, which conveys Anissa’s tendency to deflect attention while also playing around with her friends’ heads:

“Anissa and her friend Jeremy took my week-long Fundamentals of Furniture Making…. The two of them were great to have in class — lots of fun. Jeremy was especially funny. The last day of class we were having lunch on the picnic tables behind the school. Jeremy had gotten a birthday cake for Anissa – “Happy Birthday Anissa” written on it – candles, the whole bit. He had us sing Happy bday to her. The whole time she kept saying – “but it’s not my birthday, it’s not my birthday!” He kept at it, and we all had birthday cake and Anissa kept insisting the rest of the day that it was not her birthday. No one believed her….”

The class led to a deeper exploration of the craft.

“I was obsessed with it at that point,” Anissa says. “Working with Eric had opened up so much more than I realized was possible in woodworking. In his shop I learned how to use a table saw! Until then I did everything with a circ saw and my dad’s radial arm saw. It was my first real exposure to hand tools and sharpening. And Eric’s refined design sensibility inspired so many new ideas and spurred a lot of research into everything woodworking. I started to get why my dad was so meticulous. But Eric was doing it professionally at a caliber beyond my dad’s.” Inspired to explore the craft more deeply, she applied to the College of the Redwoods (now the Krenov School), where she completed a one-year course.

In 2006, Anissa was getting ready to graduate and thinking about what she’d do next. She knew that Fine Woodworking was based in Newtown, within driving distance of her home in Upstate New York. While looking for postings there (they weren’t hiring), she found an ad for an editorial position at Fine Homebuilding. “I’ve had my own property since I was 21,” she thought. “I’ve done woodworking. I can just get the job there and maybe I can jump over to Fine Woodworking.” She did the edit tests, went to Tim Snyder, senior editor at the time, and interviewed with the entire Fine Homebuilding staff. Rob Yagid (now editorial director) was interviewing at the same time. “The process took one-and-a-half or two months. Snyder called me and said ‘We’re going forward without you, but I know you’d be a really great fit at Fine Woodworking, so with your permission I’d like to forward your résumé over to the editor at Fine Woodworking.”

He passed all of her information on and she went through the tests and interviews all over again. “It was late August,” she continues. “I was on the phone with Michael Hurwitz, trying to persuade him to let me be his shop assistant, when the call came in from Asa (Christiana).” Two months later, Anissa did her first shoot involving a flight out of town, with all the scheduling, rental car, hotel and equipment schlepping such travel entails. That trip was to my shop; Mike Pekovich came with her to show her the ropes.

As it happened, Newtown, like the Bronx, was a 90-minute commute each way from her home. For the first year and a half, she commuted four days a week. Since then, she has switched to spending three days a week on the Taunton campus and two working remotely.

Anissa had her daughter in 2009 and her son a year later. She worked at Fine Woodworking through both pregnancies but left in 2011, when her son was one year old. “I had a 90-minute commute and two infants,” she explains. “It was just too much. I wanted to focus on my children.” She tried taking the children to shoots, breast pump at the ready, but for that plan to succeed, her husband had to accompany her and keep a close eye on the kids. “What you have to give changes when you’ve had kids,” she says. “That never jived with my work ethic.”

While she was not on staff, she freelanced for Taunton’s special-interest publications. I had no idea what had become of her, when one day, at an airport, I happened to spot Arts & Crafts Furniture on a magazine rack. I cracked the cover, and there she was, with an editor’s note. She also edited several other special interest publications, including the tool guide – work she enjoyed for its challenges. “You have to re-edit the articles to make them fit,” she explains. “It’s the problem-solving part of the puzzle that I really like.” Kind of like putting a groundhog skeleton back together from a pile of bones.

“I’m not office job material on the whole,” she says. “But I’m able to function in this job and love it because it’s so different all the time. It’s so creative, and the people I work with – we’re such a great crew right now. It’s such a joy to be working with people in creating this thing that goes out into the world and allows other people to create things.”

When Asa stepped down in 2014, Tom McKenna became editorial director. She’d worked for him on the freelance gigs and he made clear that he would love to have her back on staff, should a position open up. “Yeah, I would really consider that,” she remembers thinking. A job became available in late 2015. Both of her children were in school (kindergarten and first grade, respectively). She was getting divorced. The timing was good. She accepted the position.

The work at Fine Woodworking has changed over the years. There are fewer staff members today than when Anissa started the job. There’s significantly more digital content, such as podcasts and blogging. The basics, though, remain the same: She works with authors to hone article proposals; meets with fellow editors to discuss the concept and art direction; gets a manuscript from the author and generates a shot list. She collaborates with Creative Director Mike Pekovich to fine-tune the article’s focus and determine which props should be on hand for the shoot. And then she travels to authors’ shops for photo shoots, which have taken her all over the U.S. and Canada. (She currently has some articles lined up with Aled Lewis in Wales.) In addition to working on feature articles she’s the editor of the Designer’s Notebook and Handwork departments.

“Coming back after four years, I was ready to throw myself right back into it,” she continues. “I was so excited to be back at the magazine. I pitched this wall unit article and had all this stuff going. And then, bam! It was about a month and a half before I was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer.

“The radiologist was not good at hiding his emotions. I knew. I already knew it was cancer even before getting the biopsy. The surgeon called and said ‘Come in right now.’ I was on my way to the office. I stopped the car and emailed Tom. He was great through the whole thing. It was just really hard. At first, I didn’t tell anybody but Tom at work.

“People handle it differently. I needed to process all of it. I couldn’t just instantly jump into surgery the next week. I was diagnosed in mid-January and didn’t have my surgery until mid- to late-March. For those two months, I was just working and taking sick days and going to appointments and figuring things out.

“I kept things pretty quiet, but as people found out everybody was just amazing. The HR people were super supportive. As I got closer to the surgery date, Liz Knapp and Betsy Engel said, ‘I don’t know if you know this, but I know a couple people who… Would you like to talk to some people who have been through this?’ There were three people in the company I ended up talking with. It was immensely helpful to be able to speak with these people, to talk about what they chose to do and how they handled everything.

“People outside of Fine Woodworking did that, too. There is this unspoken club. You don’t want to be in it, but once you’re in it you’re grateful for the support. And I had health insurance. I was glad that I had the support I did from the people I work with in terms of logistics. I felt so bad, because I’d left Fine Woodworking after two maternity leaves and then I was back with cancer.

“That’s what cancer does for you. It’s that hidden gift. You know that things are out of your control and you just have to give it up. You make the best decisions you can for yourself. You cannot rely on doctors and nurses and health insurance companies to make those decisions for you. This was the second time in my life I realized ‘You have power.’ I knew I was on the right path. I just slowed down and made these decisions for myself. I gathered information and took care of my kids and did my job and took time off after my surgery; it may have been two months. And then started chemo in July. I was going back and forth to the city for appointments and treatment. I switched from Sloan Kettering to an oncologist in the Hudson Valley who managed to be an oncologist in an artistic sort of way. She listens and thinks outside of the box and does things differently. I knew that was the right choice, too.”

Anissa had chemo every other Wednesday, was off the rest of the week and went back to the office on Monday. “As the end of the four months got closer, I was really tired. I just plodded through it.”

Almost a year to the day after finishing chemo, she ran the 2017 New York Marathon.

“But then I tore my meniscus in the middle of the marathon!” she adds. “But I finished. It was just slower! And ended up with knee surgery in March of 2018.”

Her running partner, Judy (in the pink top, above), has been a close friend since the two of them had their kids. Entry to the marathon was by lottery, and Judy hadn’t won a place, even though they’d applied together. Those who didn’t get in could buy a place by raising money for designated causes, so to honor her friend, Judy did a breast cancer fundraiser. “She had yard sales, a gofundme site through the breast cancer group and sold socks that said ‘I love boobs.’” Between them Judy and Anissa raised $3,000 or $4,000. They ran the marathon together.

“Fine Woodworking has seen me through a lot,” Anissa continues. “A divorce. Two kids. Cancer. It’s been a steady in my life for 13, 14 years. And this crew! We’re just very even. Very funny. There’s no drama. We don’t acknowledge big things in an overt way, positive or negative. If we do, it’s so subtle, or low key. It’s a really healthy place to work in terms of drama and emotion. A solid place with solid, good people.

“One of my biggest regrets when my dad died is that he didn’t get to meet my kids,” Anissa says. “And he wasn’t around when I got this job. We were really close and I loved building things with him. He was so meticulous, and I was so young and impatient. I just wanted the bookshelf finished, or the box we made finished. And he would say ‘No, you have to do it this way.’

“He would want it done the right way, and I would say, ‘Dad, can’t we just throw this thing together?’ And now I get why he persisted. The fact that he died prior to me getting into woodworking the way I did and being able to show him the magazine and talk to him about the magazine… I’m sure if he were still around he would be making things from the magazine all the time. Hanging out with him was what got me into woodworking.”

After her father died, she photographed his basement shop to document it. “I still have the weird stuff he would bring home from work,” she says. She took it to a storage unit for a while, then moved it into her own basement, along with his tools and woodworking machines, a way to keep him close.

— Nancy Hiller, author of “Making Things Work”

And here’s an update on the archaeological dig:

May 2017.

I’m on my way to Handworks, a renowned hand-tool woodworking event in Amana, Iowa. After seven hours of interstate driving I know I’m getting close when the GPS directs me off the highway into a residential area with a modern nursing home complex that seems to occupy an entire block.

Hmm. Not the Amana I expected – the one with quaint German-influenced architecture and century-old barns. According to the GPS, my destination is just around the corner. I turn, only to find myself on a lane that dead-ends in a corn field.

I’m too tired for this. Screw it, I think, frustrated to the brink of tears. I hardly know anyone who’ll be at this event anyway; I’m turning around and going home. But as I retrace my steps to the highway I spot a car heading in my direction and flag it down. “Take this road,” the driver tells me. “You’re almost there.”

Sure enough, a few miles on I spot a sign confirming my arrival. A friendly pedestrian points me to a gravel parking lot, where I spot an Orthodox priest – long beard, flowing black robes. He seems to be directing traffic – like you do when you’re an Orthodox priest.

So went my introduction to the brothers Abraham. Father John and Jameel are best known to woodworkers as the force behind Handworks, which is held roughly every two years, as well as Benchcrafted, a business that produces Brunhilde-level woodworking benches, smooth-running vises designed with as much care for how they look and feel as for their holding power; old-fashioned hinged seats that bolt to benches (or kitchen islands) and swing out of the way when not in use; scrapers and other tools; and a range of ironic stickers based on vintage cigarette cards.

Over the next three years I got an inkling that there was more. Father John dropped the occasional crumb about vegan cooking or Doc Marten boots. Jameel shared pictures of his lutherie and furniture on Instagram, along with posts about driving his niece Emilia to Taekwondo lessons, or teaching her and her brother George to flatten a Roubo benchtop with a jack plane when they were both in grade school. The brothers Abraham were clearly a couple of characters. I was itching to interview them for this blog, but they demurred.

Three years after we first met, they finally said yes. When I caught up with them by phone, they were eating Cheez-Its.

“With Cheese Whiz,” one of them added.

Asked about the nature of their days at this point in the coronavirus pandemic, they respond: “We cook and eat. Go to church. Drive old Porsches (inexpensive old ones that anyone who buys a Honda Civic can afford). And – what’s the other thing? Oh, Benchcrafted.” In other words, they’re as engaged as ever in running the business that is their livelihood. “To pay for car parts. And food.”

They also spend time with three of Father John’s children who still live at home: John (25; in the background I hear Jameel shout “You’re asking your younger brother how old your children are?”), George (16) and Emilia (15), the last two home-schooled. The fourth, Sophia, is recently married and lives with her husband.

Roots

Father John and Jameel were born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where their Abraham forebears landed after emigrating from Lebanon and Germany more than a century ago. Their story is a classic of 20^th-century American success born of hard work and honest living.

Their grandparents on the Abraham side married in the 1920s; their grandmother worked for Quaker Oats, their grandfather for a meat processing plant. After several years they opened a small grocery store where both worked after their factory shifts. A few years later, they’d saved enough to start buying rental properties. Their daily routine became: work on the rental properties before “work”; work at the factory; run the grocery after their shifts; then work some more on the apartments. Eventually their grandfather became foreman at the packing plant; because there were so many workers from Czechoslovakia, he learned to speak Czech, in addition to English and Arabic (his native language).

Their father and uncles grew up in the rental property business, as did Father John and Jameel, though they came along at the end of it. From the property business they learned the basics of construction, including electrical work and plumbing. They also gained an appreciation for the value of hard work and the vagaries of human experience.

The properties were rented to low-income tenants and were located in the same neighborhood where Grandpa and Grandma Abraham lived. Even as their grandparents aged and became more financially secure, they remained in that neighborhood.

“It was very colorful,” Jameel reminisces. “Old turn-of-the-century houses, frozen pipes in winter,” to which Father John adds “Us getting up at 1 a.m. to thaw frozen pipes because the renters really enjoyed the mix of hot water and open windows in winter.” Their grandparents paid the utilities, so renters felt at liberty to leave the windows open; the cold air sank and froze the pipes.

Jameel shares an incident that reveals their grandfather’s character. “We also had sleeping rooms with a kitchenette and a bed – for single men, like construction workers. A lot of these guys were drinkers; they’d spend their pay at the bar, then come home, sleep it off, and repeat the next day. Grandpa gets a call from one of the renters: ‘So-and-so is throwing a fit. There’s big trouble. You’d better come over here, Abe.’ Grandpa goes over; Dad is with him, probably eight years old or so. Grandpa Abe says ‘What’s going on?’ The tenant says, ‘Get outta here! I’ve got a gun. I’m gonna kill you.’ My grandpa was fearless. He said ‘I know you; you’re not going to do something like that.’ My grandpa had the key; he opens the door and talks the guy down. It stuck with me because nowadays guys would call the police. Everybody in town loved him. People would come up to us for years and say, ‘Your grandpa was the greatest gentleman ever.’”

“My grandfather was kind of like the Godfather but without the violence,” Father John elaborates. “He engendered that kind of respect. Routinely over the next 30, 40 years, governors, senators, politicians would eat at their table. He was so even-keeled. He had a reserved charisma. [Our grandparents] ate dinner at the White House [when Carter was president]. And they were nobody; they really were.”

Father John also learned a lot at an early age about running a business. He was taking care of bookkeeping in his teens, in addition to much of the remodeling as the properties changed tenants. “Probably the most important thing my grandparents imbued in my father, and in us, through him,” he says, “was that there was really no difference between people. They treated these renters exactly the same as the senators and politicians who would eat at their table.”

He offers an example. “The back door to the house entered into the kitchen. My grandma, her day was occupied from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. with cooking. People would come to the door to pay rent and they would be let in, and they would be fed. So we grew up in that environment. We never thought anything about anybody. Everybody’s the same. Treat everybody well.”

“The Golden Rule,” Jameel chimes in. “My grandparents would make sure every tenant had a turkey at Christmastime.”

Their grandfathers on both sides were “serious post-WWII hobbyist woodworkers.” Both had shops where they spent a lot of time. “Grandpa Abe, being very frugal, would build elaborate fret-sawn church furniture for our church out of BC plywood,” Jameel says. “He would slap a coat of golden oak stain on it and walk away. It was full of soul but pretty awful furniture. It felt like #80-grit sandpaper. We still have a piece of his in our church. He never bought a piece of hardwood in his life. Grandpa Sam did the same, but he made stuff out of hardwoods.”

On visits to their maternal grandparents’ farm, Grandpa Sam would have them build

a clock shaped like Iowa, which he would finish with pour-on epoxy, or a cutting board shaped like a pig. “’Now, you boys,’” he’d tell them, “’don’t you go near that deer sculpture or that clock,’ because the epoxy took three days before it stopped being sticky like a fly trap.”

The Church

In 1987, when Father John was 18 and Jameel 13, their church lost its longtime priest. There was no one to take up the mantle. Their father had been a chanter, as had his father before him. “Dad said ‘I’m going to step up to the plate and be ordained and be the pastor of our church,’” Jameel recounts. “Our life changed a lot. We got way more involved in church. I got really interested in Byzantine art. In the Middle East, Russia, Greece, North Africa, Egypt and Italy, there’s a rich artistic history of decorating the walls of churches with mosaics, frescoes, etc. In the Orthodox Church you cover every square inch with art representing everything from Adam to the resurrection and beyond. It’s a timeless tradition. Anything that relates to the spiritual life of the church can be depicted in an iconographic representation.”

Jameel took up sketching. “I would look at prototypes in books and try to copy them, get

a feel for the style. Fast forward to when I was 17 or 18; when FJ got married, we all went on a trip together to California. We stopped in a monastery on the way back. The [monks] earned their income by painting murals on canvas and installing them with glue on the church walls. They had a huge wall with a giant Schedule 40 PVC tube on the top that they attached the canvas to. They had a winch – like a bass boat winch – so they could roll it up and work on different parts.” He has the same set-up in his home studio today.

He continues to describe the impact of that visit to a California monastery. “It was like a thunderbolt. I wasn’t interested in the iconography for spiritual or religious reasons at first. What captured me was the colors, the stylized nature of it; the look of it always appealed to me. When I went home it was only later that it really sunk in. Two or three years later it hit me and I decided I really wanted to try it.”

Father John and his wife had enrolled at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Rapids around 1989 to study art. They lived in married student housing. When Jameel was ready for college, in 1992, he moved in with them. “It was free rent,” he says bluntly. He enrolled in a Russian linguistics class, thinking he’d become a translator; he’d been a straight-A student in Russian at high school. At college, though, he says he hated the Russian class; the one subject he loved was writing. He skipped a lot of classes but is quick to note that he wasn’t just blowing things off. “That was when the spark of painting took hold. I built an easel and spent hours in my bedroom painting. At the end of the semester I thought ‘I’m just going to go home and paint until I get decent enough to see what happens.’”

When Jameel dropped out after that first semester he was joined by Father John and his wife. They didn’t see how they would make practical use of their art degrees other than by teaching, which neither wanted to do. The brothers briefly attended the Ringling Brothers Circus School in Florida, hoping to become trapeze artists. “But we were too fat,” laughs Father John. “You know, the tensile strength of 3/8″ cable can only handle so much. You put two Abrahams on that and there’s gonna be shrapnel flying.”

Shortly after the circus school adventure they launched their first business. It was still the early ’90s, and there was a serious shortage of candles in the Orthodox church, which only permits the use of beeswax candles for ceremonies. As a metals major in college, Father John had built a prototype for candle-production equipment. “We figured out that we could probably make a living making beeswax candles,” he says. “In ’93 we officially started Mount Sinai Orthodox Church Products. We named it after Mount Sinai because of the burning bush and candles and fire…. Technically, we still do it.” Around the same time, Father John’s first child, John, was born and he decided to be ordained, following in his father’s footsteps.

Woodworking

The brothers’ involvement with their church is also largely responsible for Jameel’s immersion in fine woodworking. “My serious interest in woodworking sprang out of practicality,” he says. “We needed furniture for our house and our church, and we couldn’t afford it. The carved elaborate Greek-style church furnishings are astronomically expensive. I bought a V-tool and made some basic things out of birch veneer plywood. Right away, dad introduced me to a guy here named Gary. I went to his shop and commissioned him to build a pair of doors for the church. At that point the spark in me for fine woodworking was kindled; within a year I was working for him and building some pretty nice furniture.” Jameel was about 22. “At the end of one day he handed me a book: A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook.” It was a pivotal experience.

At this dramatic moment in our conversation shouting erupts on the other end of the line. Like any good kid tattling on his brother, Jameel informs me “He’s eating ham!” and turns to Father John. “Don’t eat ham when Nancy’s on the phone!”

“I fell down the rabbit hole,” he continues, ricocheting back to business. The Cedar Rapids Public Library had a good woodworking section, with 11 volumes of technique articles by Fine Woodworking and back issues all the way to FWW No. 1. He checked them out in rotation, repeatedly, and read them from cover to cover. That, he says, was his education in woodworking.

He spent every minute he could in the shop, practicing techniques and sharpening his tools. His shop at the time was half of a garage, his first workbench a repurposed beauty salon countertop with a wash basin in it. He removed the mirror from the back of the cabinet and replaced the original counter with a piece of particleboard.

Benchcrafted

Around 2001, Jameel had a friend who needed a gift for his sister’s wedding. He had an idea for a product, a Magblok – a strip of hardwood with an embedded magnet, a safe, attractive way to store knives or woodworking tools with sharp edges. Jameel made the first Magblok out of rosewood or cocobolo and his friend gave it to his sister.

“I’d been painting the walls of our church with murals since about 1994,” he says, “and I’m about 75 percent done with it. By 2005 I had realized that as long as I was painting for someone else, for money, I wasn’t painting for our church. I needed to come up with something to earn a living that would also allow me to paint for our church in my free time. Why don’t we try making some of these Magbloks?” Because the wooden strip would be small, they could afford to make it out of something special with a high per-board-foot price without having to charge a lot for the product.

It was Father John who came up with the name “Benchcrafted.” In 2005 they launched the website. Their candle business had become so successful that it allowed them to start the new venture. They got good press. Sales increased.

By now, Jameel had become an accomplished woodworker. Not only was he building furniture (Morris chairs, tables, beds, full kitchens); he was also making ouds – short-necked string instruments played throughout the Middle East, Northern Africa and parts of Europe and Asia. One night while surfing the net he came across Chris Schwarz’s blog post on the Roubo bench. He wrote to Chris and said “I’ve been woodworking for a long time. I’m really impressed with your work and your approach.” He was ready for a better workbench but couldn’t find a vise he considered worth buying. So, following Chris’s example, he looked to history for a guide. “I dove into the patent record, and the first vises we made emerged from that. In 2008 I made my Roubo workbench, which I still work on every day.”

That year they made three vises. Jameel was blogging about making ouds, so he started blogging about the workbench build as well. “The opposite end of the spectrum!” he acknowledges. “People were following me and said, ‘Hey cool vise. Can I buy one?’” A retired tool and die maker was making them for Benchcrafted out of his garage. “It just kept going. The original product, the Magblok, which had nothing to do with benches or vises, eventually evolved into a business making benches.”

Handworks

Also in 2008, the first Woodworking in America took place. It was held at Berea College in Kentucky; the event was hand tools only. The stock market had just crashed, the economy had tanked, and everyone was nervous about the future. “Chris [Schwarz] and the others at Woodworking Magazine came up with it,” recounts Jameel – “a conference for boutique hand tool makers. We didn’t have vises to sell. We borrowed space from Ron Brese, a plane maker. This event was like … there was electricity in the air. Everyone we’d been talking to came down. It was tiny, it was intimate. Roy Underhill was there.”

As time went on, the character of the biennial event changed. There were machines, jigs, laser-cutting equipment. Instead of its original location in the rolling hills of central Kentucky, it now took place in a convention center, “a big concrete bunker” Jameel calls it. “It had no charm.”

They wrote to the people at F+W Media, who organized WIA. “’Listen, there’s a place called Amana, Iowa. There’s an old barn there with a great vibe. If you’re going to continue this you should have the event at the Festhalle. We don’t have any personal interest in this other than we love it.’ We sent pictures, we shot a video. We basically handed them Handworks before it was called Handworks: ‘This is the future of hand tool woodworking. This is it!’ They basically said ‘No, thank you.’”

About four years later they’d pitched the idea to Konrad Sauer, Raney Nelson, Chris, Megan Fitzpatrick and a few other close friends. “Everybody was enthusiastic. Our guiding principle was – here’s how Handworks is: ‘Hey, Konrad, you wanna come to Iowa and hang out in a barn for a weekend and talk about tools?’ That’s what it is. Chris has had our backs the whole time.” The rest of the exhibitors were 100 percent on board. They held the event in 2013, 2015 and 2017. The next one is scheduled for this September.

Father John and Jameel organize the event, contact prospective vendors and speakers (and request their help in publicizing the event), plan who will go in which building, accept freight deliveries of tools and other products that have to be shipped and then deliver them via forklift to their respective buildings and so on. At first they did the artwork for the event posters themselves, but they’ve had the last two designed by Steve Thomas, an artist in Minnesota. As for the venue, it’s a quaint historic village with drool-worthy old buildings and a spectacular timber-framed barn. Who strings up all those lights? I ask. “They’re up all the time,” responds Father John. “Amana has festivals in the barn and rents it for weddings, so it’s ready.” They split the rental charges among the vendors.

“Handworks as an entity does not exist,” Father John explains. “It doesn’t make money, it doesn’t spend money.” He and Jameel run the minimalist website, which informs visitors where and when the event will take place and asks them to sign up.

Most of the work is in logistics, then sweeping up everyone’s shavings when everyone else goes home. “And cardboard!” adds Father John. “From books at the Lost Art Press booth! Hey, why don’t you clean up your crap next time?!”

– Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work

“Chromosomes have nothing to do with your abilities or potential in a woodshop.”
— Barbie, of Barbie Woodshop

Among the first questions posed to any woman in woodworking seems to be: “How did you get into this?” Followed by: “Was your father a woodworker? Your husband?”

In Megan Fitzpatrick’s case, anyone familiar with her whip-smart writing about her home restoration exploits might speculate that her involvement in woodworking began with her interest in restoring old houses. She’s lived in old houses her entire life — first an Arts & Crafts cottage; then, when she was 7 or 8, her family moved into an antebellum farmhouse in Louisville. Amazingly, that property still had its original smokehouse and summer kitchen. Because it was more than a century old, she says, “it always needed work.” But her father “wasn’t terribly handy.” So, no, she didn’t get started in woodworking because of her dad; nor was it really because of old houses. Rather, she arrived at wood through words.

“I was brought up to be an academic,” she says. “There was no question that I would have to go to college,” though she doesn’t recall being pressured to pursue any particular course of study. A longtime fan of Dave Barry and Richard Des Ruisseaux, humor columnists for the Miami Herald and Louisville’s The Courier-Journal respectively, Megan wanted to be a journalist. “When I got older,” she adds, “I realized humor was pretty much the hardest thing to write.” She enrolled in undergraduate studies at the University of Cincinnati, which had no journalism major. “So I got a degree in English Literature instead.”

Those who know Megan as an erudite and entertaining woodworking instructor, author and editor may be shocked to learn that she failed out of college. “I was so busy having so much fun working for the school paper, The News Record, that I never went to my classes — except for the few I liked. I was asked to leave.”

Needing income, she took the kinds of retail and service-industry jobs that gave many of us our start — selling clothes at Banana Republic, serving customers at a coffee shop. The first glimmerings of a break came in the early 1990s, when she was hired as a clerk at The Cincinnati Post, a position that involved “doing whatever you were told: go pick up donuts, go to the printing plant. We would get the papers when they came off the press and bring them back for the writers and editors. We ran things up and down stairs to the ‘morgue’” (where clippings were kept).

It wasn’t long before she realized she wanted to write, and her editor began giving her opportunities to do so — though she stresses it was “always as a guest reporter” and the assignments involved matters of such non-pressing local interest as recent goings-on at the Great Dane Rescue Society. Her first professional byline was covering a Kenny G concert, because, as she says, “no writers on staff wanted to do it.” She wanted to write more, but they wouldn’t hire her in that capacity without a degree.

With fresh motivation, Megan signed up for evening classes with a plan to complete her bachelor’s in English at the University of Cincinnati. By day she worked full-time at The Cincinnati Post, still mainly as a clerk but with the occasional chance to write. She graduated in 1996.

“I immediately realized I liked school again, so I applied to graduate programs for a master’s in English,” she says. She earned a scholarship from The Scripps Howard Foundation for newspaper employees that paid for her tuition and living expenses, and allowed her to complete her master’s in English in two years.

Megan was smitten early on by the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. When she was 11 or 12 (she can’t remember exactly) her family traveled to Greece after visiting an aunt and uncle stationed in Germany by the Air Force. As her parents drove their rental car through Greece’s ancient architectural wonders, Megan sat in the back seat with her brother, scarcely looking out the window, so focused was she on memorizing Mark Antony’s oration at Caesar’s funeral.

“Shakespeare’s language was lovely, as were the universal truths revealed in his plays,” says Megan on why she enjoyed Shakespeare then and still does, today. “Anything you want to read about, you can pretty much read about it in Shakespeare’s plays.”

Her favorite play, however, “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” is not by the illustrious bard. Rather it’s written by Francis Beaumont. “It’s a joke about syphilis,” she says. “But few people know Francis Beaumont, so I say I studied Shakespeare.”

In 1998, when she was 30, Megan was hired by F+W Media, a few months after completing her M.A.

“I was a low-level copy writer, hired to write promotional material,” she says. “I dressed up for work every day — skirts and high heels. My immediate supervisor left and I was hired for her position — promotions manager. It would have been 2000 or 2001, so I was actually in charge of some titles and did all the marketing for them. One of those titles was Popular Woodworking. I would stomp down to the offices of Popular Woodworking in my high heels and short  skirt and give the editor and publisher, Steve Shanesy, a piece of my mind, because he was always late returning materials.”

She made an impression. (Christopher Schwarz was promoted to editor just as Megan joined the staff; Steve stayed on as publisher.)

“When Kara [Uhl] was leaving Pop Wood to join the Writer’s Digest team, I had turned in my resignation at F+W to go back to school and get my Ph.D.,” Megan says. “It would have been August 2005. And both Chris and Steve said, ‘Hey, do you want the managing editor job at Pop Wood?'”

The job, she explains, was to be the traffic cop — “making sure people got their stuff in on time, copy editing, making sure people got paid. Basically it was back to my clerking job, but with a better title. But this time I was also working with the words. And there was nothing wrong with being a clerk! It was more intellectually rewarding than making coffee for people.”

At first Megan told Chris and Steve no. Undeterred, they offered her the opportunity to do the job while taking classes. So she changed her mind and stayed. And even though she still planned to leave the magazine eventually in exchange for college-level teaching, she took the opportunity to gain some serious woodworking skills with Chris’s encouragement and the use of the Pop Wood shop (and, she notes, “using Chris’s tools, which he kindly loaned me”). She had always made things, such as a simple bookcase in lumberyard pine held together with angle brackets. But now she was able to use high-quality tools in a well-equipped shop, with expert guidance just a request away. She took to furniture making like a duck to water and built pieces for project articles in the magazine, such as a wall cabinet, a plate rack and a workbench with an LVL top.

Megan tackled her doctoral coursework from 2005 to 2008, toggling back and forth between the University of Cincinnati campus and the offices at Pop Wood every day. She would leave work, take classes, then come back to the office to make sure everything was done as it should be. “They didn’t mind, as long as the work got done,” she says.

Meanwhile, instead of taking vacations out of town, or even the occasional week off, she was strategically banking paid leave. When it was time to take her comprehensive exams, Steve and Chris let her take off six consecutive weeks to study. To call her days focused would be an understatement. “I sat on the couch, had a cat on my lap, read my books,” she says. “It was really kind of them, and I don’t know if I thanked them enough.”

Megan took her exams in February 2009, and began working on her dissertation. Then, in 2011, she was promoted to executive editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine. A mere nine months later she was promoted again, this time to content director (editor of the magazine, also with oversight of her publisher’s entire woodworking community).

At this point, she says, “I had to choose. I had no time left to work on my dissertation. ‘Am I going to stay with woodworking or finish my Ph.D. and go teach full time?’”

She considered switching to a creative dissertation, which was an option at the University of Cincinnati. “You would do a short critical paper and produce a creative work — a novel, a play — and that would be your dissertation,” she says. She envisioned a critical paper about the use of furniture in plays by Shakespeare and others, then building 10 or so of the pieces mentioned therein. But her dissertation directors weren’t keen on the idea. “It was too far outside the accepted paradigm,” she says. “I don’t think they knew how to evaluate such an approach.” She lost the drive to finish the dissertation, and even though she loves teaching, she says, “I chose woodworking.”

“As a woman editor of a woodworking magazine, I faced some sexual harassment,” Megan says. “I was often in situations where I was one of few women at a tool show, industry event or what have you, and it led to some uncomfortable situations. I thought that if we could see a broader swath of representation in the magazines and at events, that might help to address an imbalance — and cut down on that sort of crap. The people from whom we ran articles were (and still are) great woodworkers … but I knew there was room to expand into a more representative view of the world at large. There are more people than white men building wonderful things, many of whom have things to teach us. I did my best to level that field a little bit. There are black woodworkers, there are Hispanic woodworkers … there are women of all races who are woodworkers. Why shouldn’t they have a space, too?”

She made a point of inviting woodworkers from diverse demographic groups to speak and present workshops at Popular Woodworking’s biennial national event, Woodworking in America. She followed up with members of under-represented groups who’d submitted article proposals in years past. (That was how my first article for Popular Woodworking came to be published.) Then, in March 2017, she published her editor’s note for the magazine’s May-June issue online.

“Welcome, Gentles All” (a riff on a line from Shakespeare’s “Henry V”), invited “any excellent woodworker — women and men (cisgender, transgender, gay, straight, bi-sexual, asexual) of all ages, races, nationalities, religions and political persuasions” to pitch an idea for an article. While she received many emails of support after that editorial ran, Megan says she also received more negative responses than for anything she’s ever written — not that she let them bother her.

In short, Megan has made it her business to broaden the range of images that come to mind in response to the question, “What does a woodworker look like?”

“But after I threw down that gauntlet I was sort of shuffled off the stage,” she says. She’d spent nearly 20 years working for F+W when she was unceremoniously let go in early December 2017. “I would have liked to have more time to have done more, but if I did give a larger platform to people of non-binary sexuality, to women, to people of color, great. I’m glad to have had that platform to do whatever I could for however long I could do it.”

She notes that in hindsight, with F+W filing for bankruptcy about 14 months later, she was actually thankful she left when she did, but at the time, she was utterly shocked. She’d thought it was a fairly safe job. As one of those who got to know her during her last couple of years there, I can attest to her proficiency, professionalism and the unstinting dedication she gave to the operation, as well as to contributors and colleagues. She worked as many hours as it took, seven days a week. She put visiting speakers and authors up in her home when they couldn’t find a place to stay. She never missed a deadline. And through it all, she somehow managed to maintain her graciousness and composure.

“Most people love Megan for her cheerful and genuinely helpful nature,” Chris Schwarz says. “I became bonded to her because she can make grown men cry.”

“We were both hired at F+W in the late 1990s,” Chris continues. “She was in the promotions department (marketing, basically). I was in editorial. We crossed paths occasionally when she asked my fellow editors for help writing junk mail for our magazine. When they put her off or dismissed her, there was a specific hell to pay. She was always professional, but she did not suffer fools.

“When my managing editor left, I wanted to hire her. Megan was spending her free time in our workshop, building stuff and asking woodworking questions, plus she was supremely qualified in the language department. I, however, was afraid to recommend her as a candidate to my boss because she had ripped him in two on many occasions.

“The following is a credit to Megan: It was my boss’s idea to interview her for the job.

“She took the job under difficult conditions. She was taking courses to complete her doctorate. Her boss in the marketing department didn’t want to let her go and asked her to continue writing promotional material. And I was training her as managing editor (the most unforgiving job at a magazine).

“On her first day at the magazine, a technology guy came down to set up her computer station. It wasn’t simple. She needed a PC to do her marketing work and a Mac to do the magazine work — plus logins across the company’s many networks.

“The tech guy they sent generally required everyone to kiss his butt if you wanted the job done. I know this is true because I had chapped lips for about a decade because of him.

“At some point during the day, I heard the tech guy say there was a problem. He was going to leave and come back and finish the job some other day. (This would delay both her work for her old boss and her training at the magazine.)

“Then Megan spoke. It wasn’t loud or angry. I don’t know what she said. But when I walked past him a few minutes later the guy was at her keyboard, working and crying.

“By the end of the day her computers were (mostly) working.

“And the following is a credit to Megan: She and the crying tech guy got along just fine for years after that.

“She’s the best co-worker and employee I’ve ever had. Works like the devil. Holds herself to the highest standards possible. And she will not take shit from anyone.”

Back to Megan: “Of course it hurts,” she says. “It feels like you’re being let go because you weren’t doing a good job. In the last few years I was working 80 hours a week and giving everything to make the magazine and related publications as good as I could with the resources I was given, which were few.” She had given up her goal of teaching literature, a career plan in which she’d invested years of work and money, for the job.

“What the hell do I do now?” she wondered. “I was terrified. I thought that everything I had accomplished was gone.” She texted Chris immediately: “-30-” which, she explains, is “what you used to put at the bottom of the raw copy of a newspaper article to signify the end.”

Straightaway, he met her downtown — at a pub, where, she says, “I had a drink. And I went home and had many more. That was Dec. 5, 2017. On Dec. 6 I had the worst hangover I’ve had since I was an undergrad in college. I don’t recommend [getting drunk] as a coping mechanism.”

She and Chris had been talking for some time about what she might do if and when she left Popular Woodworking — maybe work on a book with him, do some more editing. She had copy edited almost every book Lost Art Press published, working on the fringes of her already-demanding job. After being laid off she didn’t spend any money for about six months. She was terrified. “How am I going to pay my bills?” she wondered.

And that’s how Lost Art Press’s “The Woodworking School That’s Not a School” got its start. Chris offered her the use of his storefront shop to teach classes. She taught her first class in February, just weeks after being let go. It filled up quickly, and she says that’s when she realized, “I think it’s going to be alright.” Chris encouraged her to teach more classes. (By now she has taught so many classes on the Anarchist’s Tool Chest and the Dutch Tool Chest that she could probably teach both in a blindfold.)

Here Megan pauses. “There have been two men in my life who helped to shape it more than any other,” she says. “Jonathan Kamholtz and Chris. Dr. Kamholtz encouraged me to go to grad school when I thought I wouldn’t amount to anything. I don’t think I would have gone without him. Hell — I’m not sure I would have finished my undergraduate work without his encouragement.” As for Chris, she says, “he has always made me think I could do something with woodworking, and helped me to do it. And he’s one of my best friends.”

Megan began doing more copy editing for Lost Art Press, more work with InDesign, more writing for the blog. Chris urged her to contact other schools about freelance teaching, and encouraged her to form her own publishing business, Rude Mechanicals Press. (She named the business after “rude mechanicals” (skilled laborers) in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Her Instagram handle, @1snugthejoiner, comes from the name of “rude mechanic” Snug the Joiner.) Chris also helped her publish a new edition of Peter Nicholson’s Mechanic’s Companion, sharing his advice and allowing her full access to the scanner in his home while he and his family were on vacation so she could scan the pages of an original copy.

“Chris and his business partner, John Hoffman, gave me all the resources to make my transition into small publishing easier so I didn’t have to spend much money doing it,” she says.

In addition to writing, editing, publishing and teaching, she copy edits Mortise & Tenon Magazine and is editor of The Chronicle, the journal of the Early American Industries Association. She’s also working on that book about furniture in the plays of Shakespeare and others that she had wanted to do for her dissertation, as well as a book on Shaker furniture.

Not long after Megan started working at Popular Woodworking, she built a small dovetailed box in a class with Kelly Mehler. She showed it to her grandfather, who said women don’t belong in the shop. “Oh, those are terrible dovetails,” she recalls him saying. “They shouldn’t have let you use good wood for a beginner project.”

I’ll show you, she thought. As hurt as she was by his remarks, she thinks he’d be proud of her now. “The way to get me to do something is to say ‘you can’t do that.’ I’m not going to let it beat me. I’m going to figure it out.”

That same resilience supports her now. As a freelancer, Megan feels fortunate in this time of enforced isolation to be able to so much of her work from home. Like most of those who teach woodworking, she has lost some income due to the coronavirus pandemic, but she’s upbeat in her outlook.

“I love teaching,” she says. “I went to school to teach. I absolutely miss teaching people; that’s been the worst thing for me. And I know I’ll be teaching people [again]. You can learn from books and magazines, but having someone there to help you and show you, there’s nothing like that. And there is little as satisfying as helping people get better at something they love to do.”

— Nancy Hiller, author of “Making Things Work“

Editor’s note: I was recently intrigued to discover the Instagram feed of a young woman who is blazing an inspiring trail for others. Barbie, of Barbie Woodshop, is fearless in the face of new joinery challenges; while always ready to acknowledge the difficulty of new things, she jumps right in, understanding that the most important key to mastery is practice. She is strategic about collecting high-quality hand tools and other equipment, has a supportive partner and manages to combine genuine niceness with razor-sharp wit. I recently requested permission to publish a Q&A interview for the blog, confident that readers would be delighted and enlightened by Barbie’s thoughts on woodworking and other topics.

— Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work

NH: Barbie, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Let me start by asking what got you into woodworking. How old were you? What kind of shop space did you start with? (I ask because my first shop set-up was in what should have been the dining room of the house I was renting.)

BW: Thank you for having me.

I’ve been crafting my whole life. All things you do with your hands support other types of hand working. I have small hands so I guess they excel in detailed working.

I started woodworking before I went to school. I spent my summers in my family’s summer house. I was always outdoors whittling and tinkering. I especially liked working with pine bark because it was soft and easy to work with, and I didn’t know how to sharpen my tools. Later I discovered power tools. At some point I thought a power router and a pocket screw jig were the most fantastic tools ever.

Before I moved in with Ken, I was first living with two of my friends in a shared flat. We had a shared kitchen and bathroom and we had our own small bedrooms. My room was always filled with tools and dust. I made all kinds of things using all kinds of materials – wood, MDF, aluminum, plaster, you name it. I worked on the floor because I didn’t have any kind of workbench or even a little table space. Luckily my friends were really easy-going. Sometimes in the morning they asked something like, were you sawing something at 2 am. And I was like, no… I was filing. I can’t stop when I get in the zone. I love how the momentum grabs you and doesn’t let go.

NH: How do you feel about being a role model for other girls and women?

BW: I don’t know about being a role model. I’d like for people to see me as a person woodworking, instead of a woman woodworking. Chromosomes have nothing to do with your abilities or potential in a woodshop. I believe many of my IG followers are kids or parents who show their kids what I’ve been working on. I hope to see more kids, both boys and girls, get into woodworking instead of only gaming and consuming social media. When you get into making things, you won’t ever feel bored in life.

At first I cleaned the shop before taking pictures but changed that pretty quickly as I felt it was the wrong approach. It’s the easy way out, to make things look a bit better than they actually are, on social media. A real role model wouldn’t do that. So, I stopped cleaning. It’s like an American ninja warrior track in there but with sharp objects.

NH: In one of your posts, Ken was delivering dinner to you in your workshop (or perhaps it was lunch?). You said it was because he knew better than to disturb you when you were working. He seems extraordinarily supportive! Can you tell us a bit more about how he encourages your work?

BW: It’s not like I eat all my meals in the woodshop, but from time to time Ken brings me lunch or dinner or a cup of coffee when I’m on a roll. I fed him once like a baby when he was working on his car and he was all covered in grease and filth.

What would you have thought if it was Ken who was working in the woodshop and I brought him dinner? Life should be a balance of give and take, wouldn’t you agree?

NH: How did you and Ken meet each other?

BW: Local hardware store, aisle 12, miscellaneous screws and fasteners section. We both reached for the last threaded insert. Our hands touched…

NH: Is woodworking your hobby or your profession?

BW: It’s a hobby. I wouldn’t want to do this for living. I’d starve.

I admire the makers who can support themselves woodworking, but I’m afraid only a handful of people can make a living out of handmade furniture and objects. The rest of us can enjoy it as a hobby. I’m not going to sell any of my creations, but I enjoy making gifts for friends and family. Money changing hands only creates stress.

NH: You have some really nice tools, as well as a great workbench. Those things don’t come cheap. How do you prioritize spending?

BW: She who dies with the most tools wins! I love tools. The shinier the better. I’d rather spend my money on tools than traveling.

There’s no such thing as too many tools. If you feel like you need a bigger tool cabinet or a second tool chest, get one. I’ve read you don’t need all the tools in the world, but you shouldn’t believe everything you read.

My dad always says it’s better to buy one good tool instead of a thousand bad ones. It’s true, but sometimes it hurts too much to pay the price. But then it hurts every time you use a bad tool. Everybody knows that, but sometimes we forget. The first plane I bought was a new Stanley SB-4. Later on, I sold it to someone. Does that make me a bad person? The thought still haunts me at nights.

Experienced woodworkers say that you first need to learn how to sharpen your tools and the next thing you need is a good workbench. When you buy or make a good workbench it will last the rest of your life. I love my workbench. I haven’t regretted going “all in” on that purchase.

Ken criticizes me for buying new tools, but I keep telling him it’s the tool fairy that keeps bringing me new toys. He’s not buying it.

NH: Fifty years ago, your forebears thought it was of the utmost importance to amass a vast wardrobe of stylish outfits – they had a special outfit for every occasion, whether playing tennis, horseback riding or going to the office. You seem to wear regular clothes in the workshop; I believe I even recall you working in a kilt one day. I think readers would find it interesting to hear your thoughts on this.

BW: It’s not like I choose to wear the clothes that I wear in the workshop. It just happens. A few weeks ago, we were having a night out and I thought I would just pop into the workshop for a quick visit before going to bed. I ended up applying some wood stain while wearing an evening dress. I don’t think I have any clothes that don’t have a little glue or paint here and there. My friends say it’s my trademark. I know I should wear an apron before I make a mess but I forget sometimes.

NH: Do you have a favorite style of furniture?

BW: I like anything I can make. Last year I stacked a few pallets together and called it a sofa. I was so proud of myself. I guess I’ve moved on from that now. Now I’m making my first kumiko. Maybe next year I’ll be making Louis XIV style furniture (not likely).  I’m probably going to try my new dovetailing skills with a Dutch tool chest build. A greenwood chair is also high on my to-do list. What I don’t like is the look of mass-produced “perfect” furniture. That stuff lacks soul and character. And I can’t see myself ever making an epoxy river table.

NH: Do you find that men are intimidated by your woodworking skills?

BW: I hope not. The thing is that many people are scared of trying new things because of fear of failure. I boldly go where I have never gone before. I try to take my time with the first try. I’m using sharp, good-quality tools, and I’m being careful and patient. And I don’t use a pencil to mark critical cuts. A marking knife and the blue masking tape trick are the keys to my early success. If you approach the scribe lines patiently and don’t pass them, what can go wrong?

I always thought dovetails were impossible to make and only mythical creatures could make them. After watching a few YouTube videos, they didn’t seem so intimidating anymore. I must admit that before making the first attempt at dovetails I thought I needed to buy some sort of jig or sawing guide. Luckily my woodworking friend talked me out of that silly belief. I feel using a sawing guide is cheating on myself, but hey, that’s just me!

NH: On your logo, you describe the quality of your work as “mediocre,” but the joinery you show on your feed is exemplary. Do you plan to modify your logo soon, in light of your ever-increasing proficiency? It’s not that one needs to boast, but exaggerated modesty is arguably one of those traditionally feminine traits that are less than helpful to girls today.

BW: When I started to build up my woodshop, one of the first things I knew I had to make was a logo. I’ve been admiring maker logos on social media and I couldn’t resist designing a logo for my woodshop. Designing the logo was easy. I just downloaded an app and made it.

I designed the sign before I knew if I could make anything. I am happy about how my practice projects have turned out and the quality of the results have been delightful for me, too.

We can all benefit from a little humility and having a sense of humor about ourselves and the world can go a long way. I think the logo is funny and it draws attention. Just like it should.

NH: How has Instagram shaped your experience as a woodworker?

BW: I really like social media, but I’m not interested in seeing celebrity selfies or people showing off their imaginary wealth. I’m looking for inspiration and new skills. I’ve learned so much watching YouTube and Instagram content. If it wasn’t for the makers who share their knowledge or skills, I would never have found the joy of hand tool woodworking and I wouldn’t have any idea how to use them. I just want to chip in and share my story and show people that you can learn new skills if you just try. Doing beats mere intention, always.

I had no intention of posting anything to Instagram. My friends twisted my arm and so, I ended up setting up an Instagram account. I’m glad I started this.  It has been a lot of fun. People are supportive, give me good advice and suggestions, which I’m more than happy to receive. Many people have offered to send me materials from their own stash. That’s really overwhelming. I really appreciate the positive vibe in the woodworking community. When I make something, I get a feeling of fulfillment when I behold the accomplishment. It’s even better when you can share the moment with the woodworking community.

Comfort, v. 1. To strengthen; to encourage; to support; to invigorate.

— The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles

Had it not been for COVID-19, many of us would have been in southwestern Massachusetts this weekend for Fine Woodworking Live. Even as a hard-core loner I had a blast there last year, and while the news that this year’s event had been cancelled did not surprise me, I’m really missing the opportunity to reconnect with some people I met there. Among them is furniture maker Aspen Golann, whom I profile here as part of my “Comforting Soups” series* of interviews with woodworkers I find inspiring, especially in this current moment. 

On April 6^th Aspen Golann published a video on Instagram titled “One way to make a brush.” Knowing Aspen as I do (which is to say, not well — we’ve met just twice, but every contact I have with her is a riotous explosion of ideas and laughter and empathy), I anticipated a piece of work that would be thoughtful, as well as beautifully put together. But it was so much more: a detailed instructional video that takes viewers through every step of the process, from design to finishing, with hand-lettered instructions written in real time – and humor! – all sent out to the universe at no charge. Even better, Aspen includes instructions for improvising with tools and materials that most of us are likely to have on hand, knowing that we’re staying home in response to the current pandemic (and many folks have seen their income reduced, if not slashed to nothing). Even though I’m probably not going to make a brush, I’ve watched the video multiple times for fun, because (let’s be honest) even the loners among us are feeling isolated and could do with a bit of cheer.

Aspen, 33, is the Wood Studio Coordinator at Penland School of Craft near Asheville, North Carolina, where she has worked since May 2019. As with other schools and colleges across the country, the campus is currently shut down. So Aspen made the video in her garage, using an old desk reinforced with 2x4s, to which she bolted a vise.

Before taking the position at Penland, Aspen did a residency at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship and collaborated with Peter Galbert for a few months.

“Hang on a sec,” I hear you thinking. “Collaborated with Peter Galbert? How did she make that happen?”

They met when she was a student in the two-year furniture program at North Bennet Street School in Boston, where Peter is a guest lecturer and instructor. “Pete’s an artsy nerd, and I think he saw some of that in me,” Aspen says with characteristic modesty. “He’s always excited to meet maker-weirdos even if they’re students – and I was so jazzed to connect with someone excited about styles outside of iconic period furniture. Pretty soon we were just regular friends.”

After graduating from NBSS she received a commission she considered out of her league: to make a Windsor settee. Not just any Windsor settee, this one “needed to perfectly kiss the wall of the clients’ spiral staircase.” The designer Beata Heuman chose her to build it because she had made a table for her the year before. She pitched the collaboration to Peter: “We split the dough and make the chair.” He agreed. “In some ways, making that chair felt like a master class,” she says. “I got to ask every question and see him work through every problem and work through them with him and alone. It was really cool.”

For a creative fix while she was a student in the program at North Bennet Street, which is renowned for its focus on high traditional East Coast furniture techniques and forms, Aspen took classes in glass enameling and lost wax casting at Penland. She also co-taught a sculptural spoon carving class with Julian Watts during a residency at Anderson Ranch. “We were scheduled to teach an experimental carving course with him at Penland this summer,” she says, disappointed.

Having seen a number of Aspen’s spoons online, I’ve been struck by their fine lines, so different from those of greenwood spoons. I wondered whether she makes them from kiln-dried wood. Yes, she answers, adding that some of the bowls are so thin “you can read the newspaper through them. The handles are three pieces of veneer thick; because they’re sandwiching a piece of shop-sawn ebonized maple veneer, they’re super strong.” To glue the material together she uses Titebond III.

Before her studies at North Bennet Street, Aspen spent six years teaching art and Russian literature at a couple of private high schools, The Cate School in Santa Barbara (“It wasn’t a great fit for me culturally – no jeans, no first names, water polo – but I loved my students; I still text with them”) and The Putney School in Vermont, which was more progressive; it had a full farm and strong focus on art and student independence. But this is Aspen Golann we’re talking about, so you won’t be surprised to hear there was more – in this case, a class called “From Sheep to Shawl,” in which students learned to shear a sheep, spin the wool and weave it into a shawl. And because color is important, there was also a dye garden, where they grew plants such as marigold and indigo to color the wool.

“I loved teaching,” Aspen says. “It wasn’t a ‘safety plan’; it was my whole plan, a big-kid job. I did it long enough that I could do it, leave it, go back to it. But [at 28 I realized] there was [still] time to do something really dumb” – here she’s indulging in her trademark self-deprecation – “and that was going to furniture school.”

“School is a place where people don’t mind if you’re terrible at things.” She had taken an ‘art with a function’ class as a student at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. “I had always loved art, but it wasn’t as fulfilling as it needed to be for me to pursue it as a full-time job. Somehow, when you add functionality, it was like this now matters. It’s a sculpture you can read by. It’s a sculpture you can sit on, and even better, it’s comfortable.”

Now, at 28, she wanted to explore furniture. “I’ve taught myself to do a lot of things, but furniture…I couldn’t even imagine how I’d approach it. Furniture felt like the most inaccessible art form, both culturally and technically, for a young woman interested in art. I felt I had to go to school for those things. I knew that my gender meant that if I was going to make it, I needed the pedigree.”

While visiting her parents in Boston in 2016 she visited North Bennet Street School, and “it was like, everything they were teaching seemed completely and impossibly out of my league. This is what I should spend money on: the thing that I can’t teach myself. I consistently invest in things that play to my weaknesses. I like doing things that are too hard for me.”

As a student at NBSS Aspen adapted historic forms to a feminist perspective. As she puts it, “I was one of the only women in a shop with male furniture makers, learning from other male furniture makers. When I feel isolated, I look for ways to express myself. At NBSS I was surrounded by masters of period furniture forms, so I committed to learning as much as I could from them – while simultaneously looking for ways to incorporate my artistic background and to talk about my experience as a woman.” In Aspen’s rendering, an Eli Terry shelf clock that would historically have had a farm scene reverse-painted on the glass panel now had the lower half of a woman’s body. “I like to blur the line between furniture and figure sculpture. I literally inserted myself in my pieces.

“I really worked with my instructors,” she emphasizes, as someone who in no way takes the work of dedicated teachers for granted. “I respected them and committed myself 100 percent to their expertise and put my own interests on the back burner. Being creative with the furniture allowed me to strike a balance – between traditional and contemporary styles, and between the roles of student and designer.”

She follows this earnest testimonial with a flourish of self-deprecation. “I had prior training in fine art, and at that point I just wanted an old master to criticize my dovetails for two years – I definitely got that, and a lot more.”

But before that…

Between college and teaching Aspen worked as a pig, turkey and apple farmer at a farm outside Austin, Texas. The property was run by a couple who needed help because the husband, a deep-water pipe layer, was gone for six weeks at a time. “And when he comes home, he’s a cross-dresser named Viviana La Tarte!” she exclaims. “The first time I saw him working, he had this really long red hair and looked about 6-1/2’ tall, with his hair blowing in the wind, and he was wearing a little secretarial outfit with a pencil skirt while chain-sawing posts for a pig fence to the same height. I woke up and came out of my cabin and thought ‘What is that beautiful being on the horizon in that beautiful outfit with that hair?’”

Not that her first sight of Viviana was any more unusual than her initial encounter upon arriving at the farm. She pulled up just as Viviana’s partner was attending to a pig in labor. Part of the pig’s uterus was stuck, and no sooner had Aspen emerged from her car than the partner shouted, “GO GET ME THE LUBE!”

“Where is it?” asked Aspen, a complete stranger to the place.

“IN THE BEDROOM, BY THE BED!”

“I ran into the house and retrieved an enormous pump bottle of personal lubricant. After I coated her entire arm in KY Jelly, she was able to get all of the piglets out safely.”

While living in the Austin area, Aspen also worked for the Haas Brothers. “They weren’t as well-known at that point,” she notes. “Their dad was looking for someone to work on a mosaic in glass, for minimum wage, for a client of his.” She worked on the project and they became friends, she and “this incredibly pleasant Austrian man who seems to appreciate my skills, affect and oddity.” He ended up commissioning her to make a painting for Leonardo DiCaprio, a friend of the Haas family.

Exploring yet another layer of Aspen’s history, we find her living on a sailboat in the Caribbean during a gap year between high school and college, where she earned her professional coastal navigation and sailing licenses through the American Sailing Association. “I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As long as I have food and meaningful work to do, I can pursue whatever other opportunities I want.

“I was the only crew member small enough to be lowered into the bilge for cleaning, so I think it’s fair to say I earned my keep. I worked so I got fed and did correspondence classes in coastal navigation and marine biology, out of pure curiosity. Meanwhile, we sailed from tiny island to tiny island…delivering half-food and medical supplies, and half b.s. t-shirts and [other] American stuff.”

Family background

What accounts for Aspen’s relentless drive to challenge herself, to subject what is so often the self-indulgence of art to the discipline of function, to cement her ceaseless learning with so many types of accreditation? “On one level,” she answers, “I come from a long line of inventors. Things should work. On another level, some people’s creativity is sparked by having complete freedom, but most people’s is sparked by being asked to play within boundaries. When my sculptures became usable, I finally cared and saw a place for myself in the creative field.

“I’ve been trying to figure out where my set of interests came from. I don’t know anything about the women [in my family’s history], because that’s the way it goes. My mom’s parents were dairy farmers.” But her favorite possessions growing up were the small-scale pieces of furniture that her mother’s father, whom she regrets she never got to meet, had carved out of firewood. “If you’re a person who carves 15-drawer chests out of firewood, you’re a tender person, at least.

“I remember growing up in my paternal grandfather, Herbert Goldberg’s, shop. He was an inventor in a time before it was easy to commission custom hardware, plastic and glass so he knew how to make everything himself. I remember my grandmother got really mad because my brother and he snuck into the house to slump glass in the oven.” Herbert invented the refractometer and updated the pacemaker to make it more functional. Making functional things runs in the family, so Aspen says “credit where credit is due.”

Credit is also due to her paternal great-grandfather, Emanual Goldberg (1881-1970), whose inventions include microfilm and the first video camera. The first Jew to be kidnapped by the Nazi Party, he was held hostage until he handed over the rights to his inventions. He escaped to Israel; later her grandfather Herbert changed the family name to Golann, after the Golan Heights.

Her father, Dwight Golann, spent his career in law. After practicing as a litigator for many years he turned to mediation, which he taught at Harvard. Her mother, Helaine, is a retired psychologist and currently teaches yoga; she has worked with people living with post-traumatic stress and Parkinson’s disease. Her older brother, David, designs and teaches maker-space classes for a STEAM program in New York City that offers art classes to schools that wouldn’t otherwise be able to offer art at all.

Back to today

The Penland campus is shut down through the summer of 2020. Although Aspen can’t get into her shop, she’s making pieces at home, some of which she sells through the Penland Gallery’s online store. She’s also doing some things she previously considered out of her league, such as electrical work and repairing small motors. In the past year she learned how to tune up all the machines in the shop. YouTube is invaluable, she says. “I’ve been watching kids’ videos about how small motors work and how electricity works, then working my way up.” I also highly recommend the book The Way Things Work!”

Addressing the strangeness of the current moment, she says: “It’s a good time to be patient with yourself, because you have time. The last time I remember having this kind of free time is when I was a kid on summer break. For the first time in my adult life, I have more time than anything else. I tell myself, ‘You have different resources, so you’ve got to do different things. The reason you’re feeling lost in all the time is…because normally time is our most limited resource. And now things are flipped. You don’t have money, but you do have time. So that’s why I made that video. Because I know people need support and distraction, and all it cost me was time.

“I’m making peace with what I have at hand. This hearkens back – some people are inspired by limitations and boundaries. What can I do when I only have these things? I’m using it as an opportunity to apply the skills I have to a completely different kind of work. If you’re a furniture maker you’re already excited by rules and boundaries. This is just an opportunity to dig deeper into that perspective on making.”

The book Emanuel Goldberg and His Knowledge Machine (2006; Libraries Unlimited) tells the story of Aspen’s paternal great-grandfather.

— Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work

*This series is my version of all those recipes for comforting soups that have proliferated across the web in response to enforced isolation and anxiety.