Famous Woodworkers

Nicholas "Nick" Offerman (born June 26, 1970) is an American actor, voice actor, producer, writer, comedian and carpenter widely known for his breakout role as Ron Swanson in the acclaimed NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, for which he received the Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy. His first major television role since the end of Parks and Recreation was his role as Karl Weathers in the FX series Fargo, for which he received a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Movie/Miniseries. He also voiced Gavin in the Ice Age franchise.

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (pronounced [ˈhuɡo ˈɑlʋɑr ˈhenrik ˈɑːlto]; 3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer.[1] His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings, though he never regarded himself as an artist, seeing painting and sculpture as "branches of the tree whose trunk is architecture."[2]

Norman L. "Norm" Abram (born October 3, 1949) is an American carpenter known for his work on the PBS television programs This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop. He is referred to on these shows as a "master carpenter".

John Boson was a cabinet maker and carver whose work is associated with that of William Kent. It is said that if he had not died at such a relatively young age then his place would have been assured in the history of furniture making in the United Kingdom.

Frank E. Cummings III (born 1938[1]:61) is an artist and professor of fine arts at California State University, Fullerton.[2] Cummings makes wood vessels and furniture using precious materials, inspired by spiritual meanings of objects in Africa.[3]

Henning Engelsen (5 February 1918 – 8 September 2005) was a Norwegian woodcarver and illustrator, born in Sandefjord, Norway.

Wharton Esherick (July 15, 1887 – May 6, 1970) was a sculptor who worked primarily in wood, especially applying the principles of sculpture to common utilitarian objects. Consequently, he is best known for his sculptural furniture and furnishings. Esherick was recognized in his lifetime by his peers as the “dean of American craftsmen”[1] for his leadership in developing non-traditional designs, and encouraging and inspiring artists/craftspeople by example. Esherick’s influence continues to be seen in the work of current artisans, particularly in the Studio Craft Movement.[2]

Tage Frid (30 May 1915 – 6 May 2004) was a Danish-born woodworker, educator and author who influenced the development of the studio furniture movement in the United States. His design work was often in the Danish-modern style, best known for his three legged stool and his publications.[1]

Alexander Grabovetskiy (July 4, 1973) is a Russian-American Master Wood Carver. Grabovetskiy was recognized as the 2012 International Wood Carver of the year, and his piece Wall Decoration was awarded first place. His work utilizes the same approaches used for centuries by master woodcarvers, including techniques employed by Grinling Gibbons.[1][2]

Greta Hopkinson (born Greta Karin Louise Stromeyer, 4 October 1901 - September 1993) was a British wood sculptor.

James Krenov (October 31, 1920 – September 9, 2009) was a woodworker and studio furnituremaker.

Mark Lindquist (born 1949) is an American sculptor in wood,[1] artist, author, and photographer. Lindquist is a major figure in the redirection and resurgence of woodturning in the United States beginning in the early 1970s.[2] His communication of his ideas through teaching, writing, and exhibiting, has resulted in many of his pioneering aesthetics and techniques becoming common practice.[3][4] In the exhibition catalog for a 1995 retrospective of Lindquist's works at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, his contributions to woodturning and wood sculpture are described as "so profound and far-reaching that they have reconstituted the field".[4] He has often been credited with being the first turner to synthesize the disparate and diverse influences of the craft field with that of the fine arts world.[5][6]

Sal Maccarone is an American author, furniture maker, sculptor and kinetic artist. He is best known as a master craftsman, and for his internationally distributed woodworking books such as Tune Up Your Tools, and How to Make $40,000 a Year Woodworking, both published by F & W publications, Betterway Books, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is also known for his woodworking technique articles published both online since 1994, Article.[1] and by the national magazine Popular Woodworking. Article.[2] Articles such as his "Evolution of an Entryway" have also been published in industry specific journals.

Thomas J. MacDonald (born June 18, 1966), known as Tommy Mac, is a U.S. carpenter and woodworker and host of the public television series Rough Cut – Woodworking with Tommy Mac.

John Makepeace OBE, (born 6 July 1939) is a British furniture designer and maker.

Sam Maloof (January 24, 1916 – May 21, 2009)[1][2] was a furniture designer and woodworker, the first craftsman to receive a MacArthur fellowship. Maloof's work is in the collections of several major American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[3] He was described by the N.Y. Times as "a central figure in the postwar American crafts movement".[4]

David J. Marks is a woodworker living in Santa Rosa, California. Marks studied art at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, California. In 1981, he opened a studio in Santa Rosa with his cat Liz and his young daughter . Through the 1980s, his focus was on one-of-a-kind furniture. Beginning in the 90s, he has moved toward wood turning and sculpture.

George Katsutoshi Nakashima (Japanese: 中島勝寿 Nakashima Katsutoshi, May 24, 1905 – June 15, 1990) was an American woodworker, architect, and furniture maker who was one of the leading innovators of 20th century furniture design and a father of the American craft movement. In 1983, he accepted the Order of the Sacred Treasure, an honor bestowed by the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese government.[1]

Jere Osgood (born 1936) is a studio furniture maker and teacher of furniture and woodworking. He taught for many years in the Program in Artisanry at the Boston University.

Alan George Peters OBE (17 January 1933 - 11 October 2009) was a British furniture designer maker and one of the very few direct links with the Arts and Crafts Movement, having apprenticed to Edward Barnsley. He set up his own workshop in the Sixties. He is well known for his book Cabinetmaking - a professional approach (re-published in 2009) and his revision (for the fourth edition) of Ernest Joyce's The Technique of Furniture Making.

Matthias Pliessnig is an acclaimed furniture designer based in Brooklyn, New York.[1] whose work uses steam bent wood. His style is "kinetically contemporary" and he uses "computer-aided curves with laborious craftsmanship" to handcraft chairs and benches.[2]

André Jacob Roubo (1739–1791) was a carpenter, cabinetmaker and author. Roubo was born and died in Paris. The son and grandson of master cabinetmakers, he earned that same designation himself in 1774 through the publication of his masterwork treatise on woodworking.

Evert Sodergren (July 19, 1920 - June 8, 2013) was a leading studio furniture maker based in Seattle. He taught for many years in the School of Art at the University of Washington, but is now retired.

Henry O. Studley (1838-1925) was an organ and piano maker, carpenter, and Mason who worked for the Smith Organ Co., and later for the Poole Piano Company of Quincy, Massachusetts. Born in 1838 in Lowell, Massachusetts, Studley is best known for creating the so-called Studley Tool Chest, a wall hanging tool chest which cunningly holds 245 tools in a space that takes up about 40 by 20 inches (102 × 51 cm) of wall space when closed. Studley joined the Massachusetts Infantry at the start of the Civil War and was captured in Galveston, Texas in 1863. After the war he returned to Quincy and joined the Rural Masonic Lodge. He died in 1925 and was remembered in his obituary in the Quincy Patriot-Ledger for his remarkable tool chest, among his other achievements.

Roy Underhill (born December 22, 1950)[1] was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and was the first master housewright at the Colonial Williamsburg reconstruction. Since 1979, he has been the host of the PBS series The Woodwright's Shop. As of 2011, the show was the longest-running PBS "how-to" show.