I didn't grow up wanting to be a woodworker. I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and woodworking snuck up on me.

My wife and I moved to Madison, Wisconsin straight out of school, up to our necks in student loans and short on furniture. We had two choices: live on milk crates, or I could try building something myself. My first "shop" was the living room of our apartment — a Skilsaw and a pair of sawhorses set up on plastic sheeting, with books and magazines propped open for instruction. The first pieces were a wall unit and a coffee table. They were rough. I loved the process anyway. Something about the design, the problem-solving, the smell of fresh-cut wood — it was the most relaxing thing I'd done in years.

So I kept building. For decades, alongside another career, furniture was the thing I went back to whenever I needed to think clearly.

The real leap came when I spent a winter at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine — a professional school where the focus is on traditional joinery and serious design. I came home changed. Good joinery stopped meaning "whatever holds it together" and started meaning mortise and tenon, bridle joints, sliding dovetails, hand-cut through dovetails. Design stopped being an afterthought and became the whole point.

From concept to finished piece, I build everything myself, from the finest hardwoods I can find. I'm not running a production line. Each piece is a one-at-a-time commission, and my goal on every one is the same: make it beautiful, make it functional, and make it good enough that someone will be proud to pass it on.

That's the whole philosophy. Heirloom furniture, built one piece at a time, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Contact the Artist

Galleries

Some of my work can now be found and purchased at:

Rubin's Furniture

A Madison, WI furniture retailer

ArtfulHome.com

An online gallery.

Previous Gallery Exhibits:

Messler Museum Gallery

Center for Furniture Craftsmanship,
Rockport, Maine

Sawbridge Studios

Winnetka, IL

Wantoot Gallery

Mineral Point, WI

Idea Gallery

Egg Harbor, WI

Grand Inspired Gallery

Stoughton, WI

Art Fair on The Square

Juried art fair in Madison, WI   2018 - 2023