John Wilson, who unlocked the mysteries of Shaker oval boxes for millions of woodworkers around the world, died on Friday, Jan. 27. He was 83.
Wilson of Charlotte, Michigan, began his career as an anthropology professor, but then became a home builder and professional woodworker whose main line of business was building Shaker oval boxes and supplying woodworkers with the training and raw materials for these boxes (especially the copper tacks that hold the bent bands together).
But Wilson’s career encompassed more than just the beguiling and beautiful boxes. He also wrote extensively about toolmaking and taught classes on a wide variety of subjects, from boatbuilding to workbench building.
John Wilson’s boxes on the cover of Popular Woodworking, August 2003.
The business at the center of it all, The Home Shop (aka ShakerOvalBox.com), offers all the supplies and information that woodworkers need to build the boxes. Wilson retired fully from business in December 2022, leaving Eric Pintar, his long-time employee and partner, in charge of the business.
“John took full retirement… in full confidence that we will carry on with The Home Shop, and I’m ready to live into that,” Pintar said.
Pintar worked for Wilson for 28 years, and began as a shop assistant there when he was 16. In 2004, Pintar became an equal partner with Wilson in The Home Shop. Since the start of the pandemic Pintar had taken the lead responsibility for the output of the Home Shop including the teaching of Shaker oval box classes. With Wilson’s passing he takes ownership of the Home Shop and will lead it into the future.
So the supply of Shaker box supplies is secure for years to come, Pintar said. Still Pintar is humbled by the role he is moving to fill and said he is saddened that it is under these circumstances.
From Professor to Woodworker
Wilson grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., and was allowed full use of his father’s hand-tool workshop. While he studied anthropology at university, he worked as a carpenter on the side. After graduating with a master’s degree, Wilson taught anthropology at Purdue University, Michigan State University and Albion College. Despite his best efforts, a doctoral dissertation eluded him, thus ending a career as a university professor. Wilson then went to work in home construction.
In 1977, Lansing Community College offered him a job teaching furniture design. There was a catch: The class began in two hours, according to a 2007 interview of Wilson by Kara Gebhart Uhl. On his way to class, Wilson checked out Ejner Handberg’s “Shop Drawings of Shaker Furniture and Woodenware, Vol. 1” (Berkshire House). That book, and the course, led Wilson to investigating the Shaker’s oval boxes and figuring out how to make them.
“To be able to take the methods used by the Shakers and share those with others is a very beautiful thing, and in the spirit of the Shakers,” Pintar said. “Before John (making these boxes) was mysterious. He brought the methods and materials to the public.”
Wilson began making the boxes to sell and taught others how to make them in classes all over the country. That led to him starting The Home Shop, a large workshop on his land that he built using mostly recycled materials. The Home Shop supplied makers of Shaker boxes everything they needed to build them, including the carefully sawn wooden bands, plans and – most importantly – the copper tacks.
One of the amazing tack machines at The Home Shop.
In 1991, the W.W. Cross Nail Co. – the last copper tack manufacturer – stopped making tacks. Wilson acquired their machinery and began making seven sizes of tacks and 1/2” copper shoe pegs. The noisy, ingenious machines crank out a pound of tacks in about 15 minutes. In the early 2007 interview, Wilson said he was making about 300 pounds of tacks a year.
Wilson insisted for years on keeping the personal touch with The Home Shop. It was years before they had a website. Orders were taken over the phone and shipped with a bill – the honor system.
The Home Shop also offered classes on toolmaking (planes, spokeshaves and travishers), joinery (hand-cut dovetails, mortise-and-tenons), plus sailboat building and paddle making.
John Wilson & John Brown
I first heard of Wilson by reading the column of Welsh chairmaker John Brown (aka JB) in Good Woodworking magazine. JB took his first trip to teach chairmaking in America in 1997 and taught at Drew Langsner’s school, Country Workshops in North Carolina, and at The Home Shop in Charlotte.
Wilson always used an efficient blend of machinery and hand tools to make furniture. JB, on the other hand, used only a band saw to rough out the pieces and then was passionate (probably an understatement) about using hand tools only for the remainder of the work.
During the class, the men famously butted heads. Though Wilson was hosting the class, he also was a student in it. So when Wilson got behind in his work in the class, he would try to catch up in the wee hours of the morning with the help of some power tools.
JB was furious.
“I received a proper dressing down such as a boot camp sergeant might give,” Wilson told Gebhart in 2007. “I stood attentive like a good solider, listening to a man deserving of respect because of his expertise and experience. I could appreciate his point of view, so passionately given, on the virtue of hand tools while blending that kernel of truth with the mix of tools I had just employed that morning.”
JB also confiscated a micrometer from one of the students and threw it in a lake.
In the end it all turned out OK, and Wilson ended up making several of the chairs for his family: his wife, Sally, and children Molly and Will.
The “Little House” at right. The Home Shop at left.
Writing it Down
In the early 2000s, Wilson began writing magazine articles and books to help spread the word about Shaker oval boxes and toolmaking. He wrote multiple articles for Popular Woodworking Magazine, which is how I got to know him. Many of his articles are free for the reading here on The Home Shop’s website.
Plus he wrote and self-published four books. Three were on Shaker Oval Boxes plus “Making Wood Tools.” Like his business in general, Wilson made his books with a careful eye to quality with a personal touch – every book was autographed.
I made several visits to The Home Shop to help take photos for Wilson’s articles. I was always struck by how nearly everything there was made by him. I mean everything. He built the buildings, the kiln, the shop, the storage areas. Plus everything inside them.
His work was always soft and humane. The workshop was flooded with light thanks to enormous skylights (salvaged from sliding doors). I got to stay in his so-called “Little House,” a 15′ x 15′ structure where he lived for 12 years. This building – built decades before the “tiny house” movement – was incredibly well-considered. It felt absolutely roomy and comfortable thanks to his planning and careful construction of every bit.
As a person, Wilson was remarkably generous with his knowledge and his time. He sent hand-written letters (always accompanied by a postcard for The Home Shop). And he has been generous to the craft. His work with oval boxes has launched the woodworking businesses of hundreds of people over the years, and he never sought credit or royalties or anything. He just seemed thrilled that other people enjoyed making the boxes as much as he did.
Thanks to Wilson, I’ve made a bunch of these oval boxes – they are incredible gifts to give. And I couldn’t have done it without him.
So thanks John, for everything you gave us and more. You will be missed.
Whitney at her Lost Art Press book release party, fall 2022.
Whitney Miller, author of “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed,” continued looking for a news reporter position while working at Walgreens from October to December 2014, and in December she was hired as Morning Show Associate Producer/Digital Content at Fox Television KRIV in Houston.
“I was a behind-the-scenes journalist so I would write stories,” she says. “And they would let me create videos on their Facebook page. I remember writing a reporter story for Facebook and they liked it so much they let another anchor read the story and aired it on television. I was like, ‘Well, if what I wrote and put together was good enough for somebody else to read, then I should be able to read it.’ I was only there for a year and then I got back on air in another market, which was the normal trajectory of how it should have been. But it was good because I got to see what a big market was like.”
In November 2015, Whitney was hired by KBTX, the CBS affiliate in Bryan/College Station, Texas.
“I loved it,” Whitney says. “I was finally back in the saddle, back where I was supposed to be. I was there less than a year and started anchoring. Then I became the weekend anchor for three years after that. In College Station I became a professional woman, because in that community, they really love their news people. Especially if you’re from Texas, they really embrace you. And I also learned how much I really liked to tell stories. I got to meet so many people who believed in the work I was doing.”
A Maker
Throughout her life Whitney has been the type of person who, if she sees something she likes, she tries to make it before she buys it.
“I think that was grown out of lack, not having enough money to get all the things,” she says. “When I was younger it was friendship bracelets and tie-dyed shirts – just things that everybody made, I tried to make.”
The internet broadened Whitney’s horizons. Online she was introduced to new ways of doing things and while living in College Station, she found a lot of ideas on Pinterest.
The farm table Whitney built with the help of the family owned business, Country Thang Design (pictured above).
“I wanted to decorate my apartment but I needed to do it on a budget,” she says. “So I would look up stuff and I’d be like, ‘Oh! I want to make this farmhouse table!’ I met a family owned business, Country Thang Design, who made farmhouse tables and they showed me how to make one. I remember feeling like, ‘I can do this.’”
The gold headboard Whitney made.
Whitney made her own headboard, and some headboards for friends. She learned how to sew and DIY T-shirts. And then, in 2017, her best friend bought her a Cricut Maker machine.
Whitney putting her Cricut Maker to use.
Whitney’s decorated door in Cincinnati.
“I have been really crafty since then,” she says. “Every time I get access to a new kind of tool or knowledge, it just unlocks more creativity.”
Whitney sewed this skirt.
Whitney doesn’t call herself a seamstress though. And for the longest time, she has refused to call herself an artist.
“It’s how I feel about journalism, I know a little bit about a lot,” she says. “Is a jack of all trades somebody who knows a little bit about everything? I’m like a jack of all trades. I like everything. I have tried everything but I have not mastered everything. I think to call yourself a seamstress, to call yourself an artist, you have to know everything about it. I think there’s some doubt there, I’m sure.”
But it’s not a negative feeling, she says. Rather, she has longer preferred to call herself a maker versus someone who is creative.
The rose Whitney would draw over and over again when she was younger.
“I feel like I’m changing that now, now that this book has been created. I would say I’m creative at this point. I had the ability to draw in the past. When I was a kid, I took classes but it was never like, ‘Oh, you’re such a talented artist.’ Back then once I learned a technique of some kind, like these roses, that’s all I would draw. It wasn’t like I was coming up with anything new.”
Now, with the release of “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed,” Whitney agrees she’s an author and an illustrator.
“Which is weird, yes, but now I am,” she says. “Now I agree. But in the process of making it, I was like, ‘Uh, but are we? But am I?’ Because the early drawings were trash. It was like, ‘What are those?’”
From The Queen City to The Big Easy
In November 2019, Whitney left College Station, Texas.
“Growth has to happen,” she says. “I got to the point where I mastered College Station. There wasn’t an opportunity to be promoted to the main anchor role. I just knew I either needed to get to a bigger market and continue reporting, or I needed to anchor somewhere. I started looking for jobs once my contract ended. Cincinnati was my next stop.”
Whitney at WCPO
At the time, Whitney, who was hired as a reporter at WCPO, says Cincinnati felt like a wonderful situation. What she did not foresee – nor did anyone foresee – was a pandemic.
“I just packed up my life and moved,” she says. “ I just knew I was about to live my ‘Sex and the City’ life,” she adds, laughing. “I envisioned myself walking down the street next to the stadium holding my cute little dog, Derwin, and some football player, doctor or lawyer was going to stop me and say, ‘Oh my God lets get married.’ None of that happened! None of that happened. And that was very disappointing. Instead, there was this whole pandemic and I sat in the house with Derwin instead!” she laughs.
Whitney at her new job as weekend news anchor at WWL-TV Channel 4 in New Orleans.
Whitney was a reporter for three years until she announced her departure and new job as a weekend news anchor at WWL-TV Channel 4 in New Orleans.
“I didn’t pick New Orleans, I think New Orleans chose me,” she says.
For more than 10 years Whitney has been a reporter and at this point in her career, she’s ready to grow as an anchor. She entertained several markets but once New Orleans became an option, nothing else made sense, she says.
“Part of that is the acceptance I feel in New Orleans. The people, the vibe, the culture is just so open. Especially coming from a place where I feel like it’s very closed, people in Cincinnati are tight and I feel like it takes years to be fully accepted there. I’ve made a lot of friends and met a lot of wonderful people in Ohio but that hospitality piece is just unmatched in the South. Nobody can beat that, especially New Orleans. It’s such a place of gathering and festiveness.”
Whitney will be living in the city, about a mile or two away from the French Quarter. Although she grew up in the suburbs and loves a good Target-Michaels-Jo-Anne’s situation, she enjoys the diversity and eclectic atmosphere city-life brings.
“I’m so excited,” she says about the move. “I can’t wait. It’s literally, it’s a dream. It’s a dream.”
The Magic Mountain
Christopher Schwarz has long been interested in Henry Boyd. Suzanne Ellison, Lost Art Press’s intrepid researcher, began researching Boyd years ago, and discovered a rich and impressive story about an enslaved Black man who bought his freedom, invented a revolutionary bedstead, built a woodworking business that shipped beds all over the country and helped enslaved people escape to freedom.
Whitney took a class at Lost Art Press taught by Megan Fitzpatrick. She built a Dutch tool chest.
Meanwhile, Christopher wife, Lucy May, worked with Whitney Miller as a digital reporter at WCPO. (Lucy is now host of Cincinnati Edition on 91.7, WVXU.) Lucy introduced Whitney to Christopher, and Whitney took a class at Lost Art Press. It soon became clear that Whitney, with her backstory, passion for making and writing chops, was the perfect fit for writing a children’s book about Boyd’s life. Christopher asked and Whitney immediately agreed.
“For the longest time nothing would happen,” Whitney says. “It would just be one sentence on the page, no matter where I sat. If I went to a bookstore, if I went to a library, I couldn’t get out more than one sentence. I would read and read the research and I would try to come up with something and I would just think, ‘How are kids going to relate to this? How can I speak to kids so they will listen?’ And then I went to that mountain, the magic mountain. And the words just came out.”
Whitney has a friend who owns a retreat area in Whitwell, Tennessee, near Chattanooga called Bolt Farm Treehouse. Last summer they decided to meet and catch up. They originally planned to meet somewhere in the middle but after not being able to find a place, Whitney decided to drive and meet her friend in Tennessee. Along the way she saw fields and cabins – landscapes that looked like, in her mind, what the landscape might have looked like in Henry Boyd’s time. And that’s when the trip started to feel like it was meant to be.
“For me, the book writing process was very reaffirming because of how and where and which it all came out. Because it all came out at time in such a calm peaceful place just meant to me that it was meant to be. The reason I was on the mountain was not planned. The timing in which all the things occurred was not planned. Writing the book was not planned. None of it was planned. But when it happened it happened and it was so good.”
Something similar happened while illustrating the book. At first Whitney says she was frustrated and worried that she bit off more than she could chew. But then she put her journalist hat on and her maker hat on and researched – she figured out what she had to do. And then she found herself unexpectedly back at the magic mountain.
“It was another unplanned trip back,” she says. “And up there my creative juices started flowing so I was able to knock out a lot of pages and the timing was perfect.”
In August, Whitney began to feel the pressure of time. She had a big journalism convention coming up, weddings to attend, and her drawings weren’t done. The day she was flying out to her convention in Las Vegas, she had three more pages to draw. The flight was delayed. So, she began working on the pages. As she drew, the flight continued to be delayed. There was talk of cancellation. Whitney kept drawing. And just as she finished her last page, it was time to board the flight.
Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Things
Whitney recently read “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” to kids at the Saturday Hoops program, held weekly at Lincoln Recreation Center in Cincinnati. Teenagers and parents were listening to it, equally engaged. As were little kids. And then a little girl said Henry looked like her dad. It’s happened several times now.
“I mean, I can’t even,” Whitney says. “That alone was enough for me, because you just don’t realize – when I think back to my own childhood, the books that stood out to me are the books that had people who look like me in them.”
Whitney recalls Addy Walker, a fictional character from the American Girl series, and books about Black inventors that her mom would give to her and her sister.
“I don’t think I ever understood why, but when that little girl said, ‘Oh look, it’s Daddy!’ I thought, ‘Oh, this is why this is so necessary.’”
Whitney doesn’t like to do five or 10-year predictions because life has already taught her that you can’t predict what is going to happen.
“I couldn’t tell you this book was going to happen,” she says, “I’m always just amazed at the plan God has for my life because I think he just laughs at mine. I just know that I will be successful. I see success in my future, period. There’s no way I can fail. Because even when I fail, it’s not failure. I don’t see stopping. Stopping doesn’t happen over here.”
Whitney has always been positive by nature, something she attributes to both her mom and dad. She says those who constantly try to bring positive people back down to earth live from a place of fear.
“Being a realist and not having any hope can be detrimental,” she says. “If you don’t see freedom. You are a slave to your own mind. And I’m not that. And I will never be that. I know there’s no limit. It’s like infinity and beyond for me.”
That said, she differentiates being a realist from keeping it real. When speaking with younger generations, she sees that for some, it’s more difficult for them to cope with truths. So Whitney says she doesn’t sugarcoat. But she also doesn’t speak in absolutes.
“Dreams”
“We live in such a time that anything can happen,” she says. “You can go viral tomorrow for some silly TikTok you did, and then somebody discovers, Oh, wait, there’s some substance to you because they were on your page just looking at the silly little thing you did. We live in such a world where opportunities come at the blink of an eye.”
Whitney also credits the divine.
“There’s no way that I sat next to Lucy, we talked about wood, she introduced me to her husband who is a woodworker, who writes freaking books, you know what I’m saying?” she says. “I take a class and then all of a sudden he says I should write a book. Oh, you think you can draw a book? There is no realism in that – there is no reality in that. That is some hocus pocus shit. That is, literally, Jesus. There is no other way. I was not thinking about trying to write a book. I didn’t plan this. And I don’t take it for granted that there are people who have stories they want to tell and who are really trying to figure out how to do it.”
Fear, doubt and limiting thoughts, Whitney says, are so often what gets folks stuck.
“I just want people to not be afraid to try new things,” she says. “I think that’s what Henry Boyd did, out of necessity, and I think that’s what I did with my life, too. I figured out a job because I needed the money. I knew I wanted to be a journalist by any means necessary and I figured it out. You can’t be afraid to figure it out. That’s my lesson: Don’t be afraid to figure it out.”
Whitney Miller, news anchor, author/illustrator of “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” and presenter of the video “Make a Swedish Tool Chest,” grew up in Houston, Texas, with her mom, dad and younger sister. Her dad was a “computer doctor” who owned his own business, Millertech, and serviced computers for large companies. Her mom worked in insurance and financial services.
Whitney and her mom
“I just remember her smelling really good, coming home from work and going to work,” Whitney says.
Whitney
Whitney, with her mom in the background
Whitney laughs, remembering for years telling everyone about how tight-knit her family was, like the family from “Leave It to Beaver.” And for years, they were. Her grandma, a nurse, lived with them for quite some time and took them to a nondenominational church, Christian Tabernacle, every Wednesday and Sunday.
“I feel like that church was very formative of who I am, who I turned out to be,” Whitney says. “I felt like it was a very non-judgmental-type of church. It was very relaxed. I was always there and always involved.”
Whitney was involved in choir, church plays, was a youth volunteer at church and attended a Christian school during her elementary years.
Whitney and her mom
Whitney and her sister
Whitney at camp
As a child, Whitney was encouraged by her mom in craft and play; she made sure to keep her girls busy. Every summer her mom would sign Whitney and her sister up for arts and crafts classes, and Whitney almost always chose an acting or drawing class.
“One summer my mom was like, ‘Y’all are not going to be bored this summer,’” Whitney says. “So we go to Hobby Lobby and she bought us this book that had 365 crafts to try, a huge book, and she was like, ‘Figure out what crafts you want to try, I’m going to buy all the materials and I don’t want to ever hear the word bored this whole summer long.’ So for two days we tried as many crafts as we could and then we stopped,” Whitney laughs. “But we always had this book that we could come back to and she was always giving us stuff that we could touch and try and do; I think that’s why I’ve always been curious to try different things.”
Whitney attended the Kitty Hawk Worldwide Convention through her involvement with ROTC.
Whitney switched from Christian school to public in middle school, and remained active in after-school activities. She enrolled in Leadership Officer Training Corps (LOTC, similar to ROTC). Whitney’s mom had been in the Army and the elective had a description for orienteering. Whitney loved the idea of a treasure hunt – using a map and compass to figure things out on her own. Turns out, the course didn’t actually do orienteering at all but the elective did teach her a lot about leadership. So she stuck with it, continuing with ROTC through high school.
The switch from Christian to public school was, in many ways, relatively easy, Whitney says, in part because her parents instilled the importance of self-esteem in both their daughters. In high school, Whitney’s parents divorced, something she didn’t necessarily see coming as a child. Although the divorce didn’t faze her much as a teenager, it was something she says she eventually faced later on, in college.
On a Hustle, Straight Through Grad School
When Whitney was 16 years old, she got her first job, outside of babysitting, at Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).
“My mom used to call me the ‘snacker lady’ because they used to have these sandwiches called snackers,” Whitney says. “I got hired because this woman was like, ‘I like your smile – I want to hire you. And then she changed the billboard sign outside of KFC to ‘Hiring Smiles.’ It’s a little strange now to think about it,” she adds, laughing.
“I was a clown once. I was a clown,” Whitney says. “But for no reason at all I just felt like I needed the money. I don’t know what I was buying, but I needed money. Someone said, ‘You just have to dress up like this clown and go to kids’ parties.’ So, I dressed up like a clown and I went to one party. I don’t know how much money I got, maybe $50 or something like that, and I never did that shit again,” Whitney laughs.
“I never did that shit again. These little children – they loved it! But never again! I don’t even know how I got there. Why did my mom let me do that? I was on a hustle. My friends used to say, ‘Oh, you’re a true Jamaican.’ Because I used to have all kinds of jobs.”
It’s a stereotype she says she didn’t mind leaning into because she loved the feeling of being responsible for herself. “I had a lot of jobs. Especially in college – I had multiple jobs when I was going to school. I just liked to work.”
Whitney didn’t grow up wanting to be an author or news anchor. In high school she loved the TV show “CSI”; after learning about DNA in her biology class, she was sure she would be a forensic scientist.
“And then I would tell my friends I also wanted to be the female P. Diddy because I wanted to be a singer but I knew that singers don’t get as much money as the person who owns the record label so I decided I would own a record label and make my own music,” she says. “Obviously, I didn’t do any of that.”
What she did do was get a free ride to The Ohio State University (OSU) thanks to good grades and scholarships. When she got there she was asked what she wanted to major in – she had no clue.
Whitney at Ohio Stadium on OSU’s campus
“I hadn’t figured that part out,” she says. “A lot of people I was there with were doing communications and I thought, I like to talk.”
As a communications major she found that only a small number of students could join the journalism program. This inspired her and she got in.
“I was like, OK. I’m going to be a journalist,” she says. “And the minute I figured that out I was on it.”
Whitney interned at all four major news stations in Columbus while an OSU undergrad.
“You were literally not allowed to do that,” she says. “But I would go to my counselors and I would say, ‘You got to figure out a way I can do this one and that one – I want to do all of them. And I did that.”
Whitney shot her résumé tape on campus. It included a video of her and her friends chasing winter storms.
“And when President Obama became president I stood outside and said, ‘This is a historic day.’ The video of me doing that is hilarious because I look a mess,” she says. “I didn’t know what I was talking about. But I was so hungry to be a journalist. I just remember really, really wanting to do it by any means necessary. I later found out that tape was trash because nobody hired me from it.”
After Whitney graduated from OSU she moved to Cleveland, thinking her tape and Ohio connections would help her get a job in journalism. But they did not. So in 2010, she enrolled in a Master of Arts program in broadcast journalism at DePaul University in Chicago.
“And that’s when I got a way better tape – and a way better understanding of broadcasting,” she says. “At Ohio State I was learning print journalism. I had all the journalistic ethics but I did not have the foundation for television in terms of delivery and on-camera presence. I was just winging it.”
Whitney loved DePaul’s hands-on broadcast journalism program. There she took classes on how to put a story together and she took an entire class dedicated to creating a tape she could use to look for future jobs.
Angels Filling in the Gap
Whitney graduated with an M.A. in broadcast journalism from DePaul in 2012. At the time, broadcast journalists simply had to go wherever they could to get a job. So she sent her tape everywhere.
“My professor told me, ‘You just need to show up in these cities and put yourself in front of the news director so they know who they’re talking to and who they’re dealing with,’” Whitney says. “For example, I would call a station in Peoria, Illinois, and I would say, ‘Oh, I’m going to be in town visiting family.’ I had no money either. It was Jesus and friends who would send me $50 to get back to Chicago. I would literally just drive everywhere. I’d go in to these stations and they’d look at my tape and say, ‘Thank you for stopping by’ and I would just leave and nothing would come from it. At all. But I wouldn’t give up. I just kept doing it.”
Toledo was the last city Whitney tried this in and although that news director didn’t offer her a job, he did critique her tape.
“He was like, ‘You should move this here, that here, get rid of this,’ and when I got back to Chicago, I fixed my tape and I literally started sending it out again. I got an email immediately because of those changes from a news director in Anchorage Alaska.
After a Skype interview Whitney was offered a job.
“I called my mom and I was like, ‘I’m moving to Alaska,’” Whitney says. “And she was like, ‘Um, what?’ You could tell that she did not really want me to go but I think she knew there was no stopping me. She was happy for me. She was happy that I was finally getting my dream job because I was living on my uncle’s couch at that point, having quit my job at a bank to search for a reporter gig. I didn’t have anything. I sold my car, packed up all my stuff and flew to Anchorage.”
Whitney says she was more excited than nervous.
“When you’ve been searching for a job for a long time, you don’t care,” she says. “You just go and get started.”
Whitney recently watched her old tapes from her time in Anchorage.
“I was terrible then too,” she says, laughing. “Oh, girl, you could just see how green I was and how I think I’m doing what all news people do. I can see that in my face. I was searching for my voice, my identity as a journalist. But now I’m just me. Before I was definitely trying to be someone else.”
Whitney worked in Alaska for two years. While she says she had a good time and made some great connections, she did find it isolating at times, only visiting home once while she lived there.
“And they didn’t have a Chipotle,” she adds, laughing. “They didn’t have a Chipotle! What? I got out of there. When my contract was over I was done.”
And then Whitney moved back to Houston.
“I thought I would get a job immediately because I was so good now!” she says. “I thought I was so good at being a journalist and I did not understand that the Houston market was too large and they would never hire someone on-air with only two years of experience.”
At this point, Whitney was living with her mom in a small apartment in Houston.
“She was getting on my nerves and I was getting on her nerves,” Whitney says. “And I remember I went to Chick-Fil-A, and this is like a month in, and I give them my credit card and they’re like, ‘Um, you don’t have enough money to get this sandwich.’ But they gave it to me anyway because, you know, Chick-Fil-A is like Jesus, they gave me the sandwich and I sat in the car and I just cried and cried and cried. I just wanted a journalism job. It was there I remembered that same person who used to drive to Toledo, who used to drive to all those places. I told myself ‘I just gotta do what I gotta do.’ So I went and got a job at a call center.”
The call center was terrible, Whitney says. She was in training for two weeks. She remembers seeing roaches in the bathroom.
“I would cry on the way to the training class because I was like, This is not my career! I would ask God ‘why do I have to come here?’” she says.
Around this time she walked into a Walgreens. A friend who used to work there encouraged Whitney to talk to the manager. So she did. She told the manager that she no longer wanted to work at the call center and she needed a job. He agreed to an interview and she showed him her news tapes from Alaska.
“And he was like, ‘No. You need to be on the news. You can’t work here.’ I said, ‘No, I literally can’t buy a chicken sandwich,’ Whitney says. ‘I need to work. Please let me work here.’ He doubled down and said, ‘No. You really can’t work here. You need to be on TV and I don’t want you to give that up.’ And I was like, ‘I will literally never give up trying to be on TV. I just need money to live.’”
The manager finally relented. Whitney applied to be an associate but he gave her an assistant manager position.
“I worked there and he would check in with me often, he’d say ‘What’s going on with you? As soon as you get a job with one of these TV stations, you can just go. You can quit,’” Whitney says.
“It has been that way my whole life. I just like to call them angels. These people who have dropped in to stand in whatever gap that occurs in my life. I know I am completely blessed and I don’t take it for granted. I just know.”
Writing “Workshop Wound Care,” a field manual that’s part of Lost Art Press’s pocket-book series, combined two things Dr. Jeffery Hill enjoys and loves: medicine and woodworking. Hill, an emergency room physician and active woodworker, organized this 184-page book so you can resolve common workshop injuries quickly. The book is knowledgeable yet also exceedingly accessible, which is important when you’re feeling a bit panicked. Hill writes as if he’s talking to you bedside, and his manner is one made up of no-nonsense intelligence and education with a bit of empathy and humor. That ease of talking to folks during emergencies big and small comes naturally to Hill – it’s a skill he’s been working on since he was 16.
Finding Mentors in a Small River Town Emergency Department
Hill was born in Madison, Indiana, a small town of about 12,000 people situated along the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati. His mother was a school teacher who taught French (and Spanish in the bookends of her career). His father worked for the Indiana Department of Mental Health, first as a case worker, then as a district and regional manager.
Hill’s grandfather was a pretty successful carpenter and furniture maker, and Hill still owns a couple of the pieces he made, including a small school table that now has a place in his daughter’s room.
“It’s really nice,” Hill says. “He did a lot of work within the community, making things for churches, general carpentry, that sort of thing.”
Hill’s grandfather passed away when Hill was still fairly young.
Hill became interested in medicine as a teenager and in high school, he began volunteering in the emergency department (ED) of King’s Daughters’ Hospital and later working there as an orderly.
“The doctors I encountered there were very impactful,” he says. “I really became interested in medicine in general and picked it as my ultimate career path.”
Hill’s educational path is an interesting one. Emergency medicine (EM) residencies are relatively new in the broader field of medicine. University of Cincinnati’s (UC) EM residency, founded in 1970, is the oldest in the country. According to Hill, prior to EM residencies, a lot of doctors in communities were internal medicine or family medicine doctors who also worked in the ED but lacked in the specialized training necessary to deal with a wide range of emergent conditions.
Back to King’s Daughters’ Hospital: Among the many impactful physicians working in the ED at that time, Hill particularly remembers Dr. Joe Beaven and Dr. Barrett Bernard, who saw a teenager who had an interest in medicine. They talked him through cases, telling him what to pay attention to, how they were sequencing what they were doing, and showing him how to take care of a lot of patients at the same time.
“I still remember them drawing anatomy lessons on the bed sheets in ink to teach the patients what was happening to them,” Hill says. “I imagine it really pissed the hospital off,” he adds, laughing. But that kind of care and way of practice, which he witnessed as a teenager, really fed into Hill’s psyche as he embarked on his own medical degree. In addition to being valuable role models as clinicians, Beaven and Bernard were also role models as educators. The lessons Hill learned at King’s Daughters’ Hospital linger today, as he teaches his residents and as he wrote “Workshop Wound Care.”
A Clinician Educator
Hill knew he wanted to attend medical school; emergency medicine in particular called to him.
He attended Xavier University in Cincinnati from 2000 to 2004 where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Sciences. From 2004 to 2008 he attended U.C. College of Medicine and earned his Doctor of Medicine. He then stayed on at U.C. for his residency training, following which he became a Medical Education fellow, earning his Master of Medical Education from U.C. in 2014. Since graduating fellowship, he has been an assistant residency director in the department of emergency medicine at U.C., an associate professor of emergency medicine, and an attending physician in the emergency department.
As assistant residency director, Hill supervises the department’s weekly Grand Rounds conference, considered “the cornerstone of resident didactic education” with both residents and attending physicians present. These weekly sessions involve simulations, case presentations, and lectures. Hill also mentors the journal club and is the founder and one of the chief editors of the department’s education blog, Taming the SRU (SRU stands for Shock Resuscitation Unit and is colloquially pronounced as “shrew”).
“It’s a great outlet for the residents to try their hand at academic writing,” he says. “It covers common procedures and conditions and literature, and includes weekly summaries of our rounds. It’s an awesome educational tool and a durable collection of all the teaching we’ve done, the Grand Rounds since we started. So if you’re on shift and a student has a question, you can look up and find where we’ve covered it before.”
Much of Hill’s work in emergency medicine has been focused on education and improving the teaching experience.
Since, as he states, “students engage when they’re more ready to engage,” he has sought to find ways of teaching that are adaptable to the variable work hours of his learners.
Finding Balance in a Busy Life
“One of the great things about emergency medicine is the opportunity to wear a bunch of hats,” Hill says. “It keeps things fresh.”
On a typical day, Hill might start out wearing an academic hat, attending meetings and working on academic papers. And then he might switch to a clinician’s hat, working a 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift. And then he’ll switch to his household hat, taking care of things at home.
Hill says while the field is challenging, there are tricks to not burning out. One of those is understanding the task-switching nature of ED medicine and bringing that task-switching nature to his everyday life.
“That’s how I get things done, essentially,” he says.
Emergency medicine has also taught Hill how to better relate to people.
“I think that emergency medicine is very much a people-person type of field,” he says. “You would expect us to be extroverts and we’re not very extroverted. But the ER makes you rapidly establish a relationship with people.”
This way of working, having to facilitate relationships with strangers in an instant, has helped Hill read and understand people in ways he didn’t imagine. You gain a lot of empathy for people, he says. You see a lot of folks who are going through some hard times.”
Woodworking’s Longitudinal Focus
Hill’s interest in woodworking grew later in life.
“I always liked to do things with my hands,” he says.
He took a woodworking class in high school, which he says he really loved, but it wasn’t until his residency that he picked up tools again. He and his wife, who he met in high school (they have a son, 3, and daughter, 8, “and they’re both awesome,” Hill says) had their starter home (a beautiful century-old house) in Pleasant Ridge, just north of the Cincinnati metro area.
“It needed some renovations and so I had to figure out how to do some things,” he said.
First up was an inset bench in their kitchen to give the family a little more seating.
“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s not put together appropriately. I used whatever wood I could find at the hardwood store because I didn’t know any better.”
Hill says he was inspired, in part, by Christopher Schwarz’s “Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
“If you have something in the world you need, it’s great to make it,” Hill says. “And I learned I was able to make things as exactly as I wanted them and needed them.”
That project led to other projects, learning more about woodworking and watching a lot of joints being made and cut with hand tools on YouTube. Hill bought a small library’s worth of books and read them within a span of a year. He created a Rolodex-like collection of home resources, in the form of books, articles and videos, he says, so that he could solve problems as he encountered them.
There is a reason “Workshop Wound Care” is straight-up problem-solving. He wrote the type of book he wanted to add to his Rolodex collection of resources in his home shop.
Hill also loves cooking and gardening. This year he grew cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce and all kinds of peppers. Together, these three things are his biggest hobbies, yet they all share a common similarity – they are all hobbies you can lose yourself in, he says – especially woodworking.
“Emergency medicine requires deep attention to detail but not quite as much as some other medicine specialties,” he says. “I focus intently on something for a short period of time, shift to something else, and then repeat that a hundred times a day. Woodworking requires a longitudinal focus. I basically stay there and work hours at a time without realizing time has passed. I’m completely focused on that and I completely let go. Gardening is less so. It’s pulling weeds. But I grow for myself. I enjoy the process of starting something off and seeing that it grows.”
Dr. Hill’s woodworking shop is split – his machine tools are in his garage and his hand tools are in his basement. His first big project was a Benchcrafted Split Top Roubo workbench. It was a multi-month-long process.
“I had a joiner but it was very small,” he says. “I basically used hand tools and handplanes to true all the surfaces before I put it through my planer. I tend to build things that are too big. It’s very refreshing to build things that are smaller.”
He has a long wish list of things to build, one of which he just recently crossed off – a beautiful stick chair. While working on it, he enjoyed the same problem-solving aspect of woodworking that he enjoys when working in the ED.
“In a lot of fields, a patient presents with a known problem,” he says. “But in emergency medicine, the problem is figuring something out with the tools you have. It’s very engaging and fun.”
How does he have time for it all? Balance.
“All that just comes from prioritizing your time and being efficient as much as possible,” he says. “And I try to get better at starting projects and finishing in a reasonable time frame. And just making the time for it.”
The Lessons of Life
Hill says that while working in the ED does teach you the good and the bad of life, it’s an honor to take care of people who are very ill.
“Life is nasty, brutish and short,” he says. “People have terrible things happen to them: cancer diagnoses, car accidents, trauma of some kind, through no fault of their own.”
At times he has to compartmentalize the things that happen at the ED. Doing so helps him better appreciate the time he has outside of work. But he also recognizes that you can’t be scared of life. He still drives on the road, he says, even though he knows – and sees the aftermath of – terrible car accidents that happen every day. And he still enjoys woodworking, even though machines are powerful and hand tools are sharp.
Hill recently posted a picture of his nearly finished stick chair, soaking in the evening light, on Instagram. He wrote about the finish he used – one coat of Real Milk Paint Co. Barn Red, one coat of Arabian Night and two coats of Peacock. He said, “Probably burnished a bit much before top coating with two coats of shop finish. At the end of the day I’m happy with the finish and learned some lessons for the next project.”
Hill shared pictures throughout his stick chair-building process. Progress shots, successes and minor setbacks, intermingled with pictures of produce from his garden, his kids – just life. It’s all learning. As a skilled educator, he understands that. Working in both his home shop and in the emergency department, he knows that sometimes, life can be easier with a manual, whether it’s an explanation drawn in pen on a bed sheet, a YouTube video or a little red reference book you can quickly grab if you’ve accidentally hammered your thumb. And that’s why he wrote the latter.
Peter Galbert (far left) along with (from left to right) Kelly Harris, Aspen Golann, Audi Culver, Lacy Carnahan and Sarah Watlington.
Peter Galbert is proof that risk-taking pays off. Author of “Chairmaker’s Notebook,” Peter is a teacher, chairmaker and experimentalist. He was also one of the first Meet the Author profiles for Lost Art Press. And with his boundary-pushing research and a second book on the way (“Chairmaker’s Notebook Vol. 2,” slated for publication in the spring 2025), Pete is still working to create a world with fewer stopping points.
Like a lot of creatives, Pete struggled to make sense of his role in a seemingly complete world.
“The world that was built up around me seemed really weirdly impenetrable, growing up,” he says. “Everything seemed so already completed. When we got to the end of the 20th century, I thought ‘What are we supposed to add to this? Somebody already figured out how to make the covers for taillights, for God’s sake. What is my place in all this, as someone who is interested in making things? How does it all work?’”
This kind of early introspection and natural curiosity led Pete to move from his home in suburban Atlanta to see what else was out there. He wasn’t very enamored with the world of high school, disillusioned by a seemingly unshakeable awkwardness.
“But who isn’t awkward in high school?” he asks. “I’m still waiting to grow out of it. I plan for next year; I’ve got high hopes,” he adds, laughing.
Peter left the South behind and adjusted to the shock of Chicago winters (and seasonal affective disorder). The transition opened up the world for him, going forward. He says it was a very productive time, and formative.
“I’ve always been pretty comfortable making stupid moves,” he says. “Giving in to impulse, in the end, serves me well.”
That impulse sent him speeding past the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and he embarked for a year on the road. He drove across the United States and started working with his hands – renovations, gallery jobs, apprenticeships. He settled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he studied photography.
His interests in photography are tied to sparking curiosity and credibility of truth.
“In any sort of making, you’re always alluding to things,” Pete says. “You’re always referencing something, through history, narratives or associations. Bringing people along through that familiarity, you can push them into a new area, where they weren’t expecting to end up.”
Variations on the classical, or subverting an audience’s assumptions are common themes in Pete’s work. Today, he breaks down traditional forms in chairmaking, but their familiarity is retained.
A settee by Peter Galbert (front view).
When moved to New York City at age 26, it was a bloom time of activity. Pete worked with furniture makers and cabinetmakers and built sculptures for artists.
“It was a very informative period,” he says. “I saw doors close, and doors open. I thought, I’m not cut out for the art world. I saw the writing on the wall, the closer I got to it. I’m just not that person.”
From the back.
While in New York, Pete got interested in woodworking. But at the time, the hand tool green wood revolution hadn’t started yet. He was making his own handplanes, experimenting with new tools and techniques.
“I was into learning hand tool techniques,” he says. “But I was nearly laughed out of every shop I was in, almost while I was doing it. They were like, ‘You’re just never going to see that make money. We need to just cut plywood and get on with it.’ And to some degree they were right. But as time has gone on, it’s been really interesting and fun to see how much interest has bloomed on that side of it from enthusiasts and makers now.”
Then, one day, Pete noticed a “for rent” sign while walking the streets of Manhattan. Inside was a 20’ x 12’ storefront workshop, partly occupied by a guitar maker, Justin Gunn.
“He was capable of building a whole guitar on a benchtop with hand tools and I was so impressed with how organic the process was. He took wood and transformed it into something that could be appreciated for more than just its structural integrity or its surface appearance, the tonal quality was like magic. I was super jealous of what Justin made and how he made it. I wanted something like that.”
Pete paid $400 a month to share the space with Justin (who later moved to Holland with his Dutch girlfriend and became a musician). Given that Pete only had room enough to use hand tools, and his desire to build something both beautiful and functional, he set out to make a chair. This pivotal turn in his life happened, in part, because he felt adventurous and – having just finished a project – he decided to break from routine and walk down a different street that day in Manhattan.
“You know, it’s funny because I see myself as rather insular,” he says. “I’m a bit of a homebody. I do my routines. My dog and I basically operate on the same schedule. Although I tend to be pretty provincial in many ways, I’m not that risk averse when it comes to embracing possibilities. If I see something happening, I jump right on it.” In Gunn’s workshop, Pete became a chairmaker.
Finding Community & Creativity in an Old Mill
“Woodworkers are notoriously a romantic lot,” Pete says. “They pour their heart and soul into it and get pennies out. It’s a very tough, tough business.”
By 2000, the low-rent-in-Manhattan gig was up. Pete was faced with a choice: rent another workshop way out in Brooklyn and continue to struggle with the lack of materials (trees) or move to the country. Two hours north he found a farmhouse with 50 acres that he could rent for the same amount of money he would have spent on workshop space in Brooklyn.
At first, Pete lived the country life only part-time. He and his wife at the time commuted back and forth each weekend. But when his then-wife became fed up with corporate life in New York City, and they recognized the fact that they were never very happy on the return drive each Sunday, they took it as a sign and moved to upstate New York for good.
In 2010 Pete moved to central Massachusetts, lived there a couple years, divorced, and lived there for a couple more years. He then moved to Boston. Despite the city living, Pete had a small yard with a separate garage. He worked in a 20’ x 20’ workshop, located close to North Bennet Street School, where he also taught.
Georgia
In our previous profile, Pete pined for the countryside. And he got there. Pete now lives in a small cabin on a friend’s sprawling New Hampshire property. In his free time, he enjoys the routine of walks through creeks and glens with his rescue dog, Georgia. Georgia started off very shy, and socializing with students took time. Now an integral part of Pete’s ecosystem, she can help students like they helped her. “Something I think is interesting about classes and teaching adults – adults are very good at their lives,” Peter says.” Whatever they’ve done in their lives, whatever has brought them to be able to afford a class and decide to do this, they’re good at it. So when they come into a place where they don’t know anything, or can’t do things, or have to learn things day in and day out, it’s stressful. Even though it’s exhilarating and they do it because they love it, they do need to pet a puppy every once in a while.”
Students at work, with Georgia’s company.
This is a shining example of Pete’s teaching philosophy. Accommodating and leveling with students is a cornerstone of his approach. “My students and I, I feel like we’re all on the same road,” he says. “We’re just at different places on it. We’re all the same person, we’re all walking into the workshop not knowing, and trying, and hoping for the next skill, next achievement. The process is very human. And I think the art of it is trying to remember that when you’re working with folks, you need to help them exactly where they are. A friend of mine, Kelly Harris, is amazing at this. I’ve watched her teach and it’s jaw-dropping seeing how comfortable she is understanding where the person starts. She just sees it from their eyes so beautifully. That’s something I think is vital. It’s one thing to have the chops, but to be able to break it down and communicate it and transmit it is as much a skill as the skills themselves. When you see it done right, it is profound. It’s really wonderful, and sharing that is a lot of fun.”
The Mills at Salmon Falls, Rollinsford, New Hampshire.
The interior of Pete’s current shop.
Pete has workshop space in The Mills at Salmon Falls in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. The five-story mill, built in 1848, has been converted to accommodate more than 100 artists, including 30-something woodworkers.
“There was space available, and it was reasonable,” he says. “I was being very practical, but I also saw the potential for a community. Since I’ve come up here, a community has grown. A number of people have come to work with me, or peripherally their partners who are creatives. Now we’ve got a little gravity going now, people are starting to show up to be a part of it.”
Pete in front of one of his classes.
Pete’s orbit is undeniable. And the mill seems miles away from any art world exclusivity. Teaching is an important part of his work, but his approach is quite different from the years he spent traveling to share his knowledge. Today, Pete only teaches at the North Bennett Street School or at his shop. Pete is also giving classes to and hosting the next generation of woodworking teachers. A big part of these classes, he says, is career advising. One thing he likes to share with his students is the breakdown between the trade and the craft.
“This notion that you’re going to be a rock star who just makes stuff at the edge of your ability all the time. That’s just not the life it really is,” he says. “You have to think of creative ways to continue to allow yourself to stay on the edge of your interests.”
‘The Love of Learning is What Binds Us‘
Pete has surrounded himself with inspired and motivated makers. And in his design process, you can see a man on the edge of his creative ability.
A contemporary Windsor.
“You can’t see around corners, so you have to start with one interest, march to the end of it, and see where that takes you and be open to where it might go,” he says. “There are just a lot of different places you can push a chair, which is one of the reasons I still see it as a Wild West. There’s so much untrodden territory. It’s kind of like writing. Everything has been said, but you can still write a really profound book, poem, or anything. Even though it’s just 26 letters and everything has been said. Chairs offer so many frontiers, comfort, aesthetics, structures, materials. So I go at it like, ‘Wow, if I can move this forward, what can that open up in the other categories?”’
“I’m very comfortable ruining things,” Pete says. “That’s been a running theme in my life. I leave a long trail of broken crap behind me.”
Temple Chair.
Along with Charlie Ryland, who works and teaches along side him at the Mill, Pete has been working to develop technology using kiln-dried wood in place of green wood. His motive behind the technology? Accessibility.
“One of the biggest things that has compelled me recently is the lack of resources so many of my students have faced over the years,” he says. “I knew there were issues with sawn and dried woods to be dealt with, but I thought, ‘Why don’t we beat our heads against this and see if we can get it to budge?”’
He and Charlie worked tirelessly – soaking, shaving and playing with sawn and dried ash until it very closely resembled green wood.
“You can split it, shave it, carve it, bend it,” he says. “It has the strength, all the working properties of green wood.”
This technological feat is part of the focus of Pete’s upcoming book with Lost Art Press.
Pete comes from a background of collaboration and toolmaking. Now, he’s working with The Chairmaker’s Toolbox on tool design and consulting.
“This is where my tool-making interest is right now, which I’m always fascinated by,” he says. “It kind of goes back to that notion of when you’ve made a tool, the world becomes so much more malleable to you. Give me a problem that I don’t know the answer to and I am just giddy.”
Problem solving is less of a trench, and more a long walk to the ice cream store, explains Pete. In terms of experimental work, Pete is at a sweet spot. “Now I’ve done it enough to know that we’re going to get there and it’s just wonderful,” he says. “Early on I used to be insecure and I would get really dejected. But now I know where it’s headed. We’ll figure it out, me and whoever I’m working with.”
Rocking Chair.
Rocking chair detail.
Ahead of a class he will be teaching for other woodworking teachers, Pete has been thinking about his design process for chairmaking. He poses these questions as a starting point: “Am I interested in a different use of the materials, the tools, a different geometry for the body, a different aesthetic? Or just a general different process that I haven’t engaged in or want to develop?”
Pete says the flow state he often finds himself in while experimenting connects his constant quest for exploration and joy of teaching.
“When I get into that state where I have an idea or concept I am trying to realize or communicate, that is the delicious part of it,” he says. “To explain something is every bit as lovely to me as to make it.”
Pete describes what he thinks about his future in woodworking, and plans to foster a community of his own. He talks about Lance Patterson at North Bennett Street School (“that old wizard there,” Pete says) and being a useful part of an ecosystem like that. From splitting his time between the busy mill and a workshop full of students, it’s no surprise that Pete’s vision is milling with passionate makers.
“Honestly, as I’ve gotten older, I don’t always have the same energy to walk into a dark, quiet shop, turn on the lights, and make everything happen on my own,” Pete confesses.
So for now, he’s making magic alongside other woodworkers (with the help of a centuries-old renovated mill perhaps contributing).
Pete’s risk-taking has many different forms. The risk of embarrassment, of admitting fallibility, is one of them.
“When you’re in the shop, hoping nobody walks in while you fix one of your mistakes, that’s you attempting a level of control, knowing full well that what you’re doing is communicating. And you do not want to communicate that you screwed up. Or that you’re incompetent or incapable or didn’t know. Sometimes, those are very humanizing moments for the viewer. People don’t want to see you as careless, but they love to see the humanity. My students always love it when I screw up. Then they love watching me fix it.”
Ladle.
By taking risks, in myriad forms and ways, Pete now understands that his view of the world as a child was, in part, wrong: The world is not complete. It’s penetrable, and actually, quite malleable. And there is always room for growth. Case in point: Pete just started a new Instagram page for the art he makes, including sculpture, ink drawings and watercolor studies.
“The love of learning is really what binds us,” he says. “Not even the love of the object, or the love of the actual process. Just having your brain turned on is exhilarating.”
Crest detail.
With “Chairmaker’s Toolbox Vol. 2,” readers will be treated to Pete’s brain turned up to max volume, all thanks to his experimentation and exploration, not being afraid of failure, and surrounding himself with a community that, as he says, “kicks my butt, opens new doors, and inspires me. I’m lucky that way. I’m really fortunate to have those connections. I’ve got a good peer group.”
