Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinetry, furniture making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning.
The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America.
Retro style is imitative or consciously derivative of lifestyles, trends, or art forms from history, including in music, modes, fashions, or attitudes. In popular culture, the "nostalgia cycle" is typically for the two decades that begin 20–30 years ago.
Waring & Gillow was a noted firm of English furniture manufacturers and antique dealers formed in 1897 by the merger of Gillows of Lancaster and London and Waring of Liverpool.
Sir Terence Orby Conran was a British designer, restaurateur, retailer and writer. He founded the Design Museum in Shad Thames, London in 1989. The British designer Thomas Heatherwick said that Conran "moved Britain forward to make it an influence around the world." Edward Barber, from the British design team Barber & Osgerby, described Conran as "the most passionate man in Britain when it comes to design, and his central idea has always been 'Design is there to improve your life.'" The satirist Craig Brown once joked that before Conran "there were no chairs and no France."
Tage Frid 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.
Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was an English architect and furniture and textile designer. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpapers, fabrics and furnishings in a Arts and Crafts style and he made important contribution to the Modern Style, and was recognized by the seminal The Studio magazine. He is renowned as the architect of several country houses.
The Art Workers' Guild is an organisation established in 1884 by a group of British painters, sculptors, architects, and designers associated with the ideas of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. The guild promoted the 'unity of all the arts', denying the distinction between fine and applied art. It opposed the professionalisation of architecture – which was promoted by the Royal Institute of British Architects at this time – in the belief that this would inhibit design. In his 1998 book, Introduction to Victorian Style, University of Brighton's David Crowley stated the guild was "the conscientious core of the Arts and Crafts Movement".
Po Shun Leong is an English artist, former architect, sculptor and furniture maker. He was born at Northampton, England, and educated at the Quaker Leighton Park School in Berkshire, and then at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, in London, and has resided in Southern California since 1981. He is also known since the late 1980s for his highly intricate one-of-a-kind wood boxes, some now in museum collections. The Landscape box, a constantly evolving series since 1983 is architectural in character and built up of many different woods in their natural colors. They are inspired from ancient or legendary civilizations. He maintains a studio in the garden of his residence in the City of Winnetka in the San Fernando Valley, north west of Los Angeles. He continues to make elaborate wood objects and is developing a line of simple, sculpturally-inspired furniture.
Robert Waldorf Loveless, a.k.a. Bob Loveless or RW Loveless, was an American knife maker who designed and popularized the hollowground drop point blade and the use of full tapered tangs and screw-type handle scale fasteners within the art of knifemaking. He is cited by other knifemakers and collectors as one of the most innovative custom knife makers in the world.
Heal's is a British furniture and homeware retail company comprising seven stores, selling a range of furniture, lighting and home accessories. The business was started in 1810 by John Harris Heal, and its headquarters have been located in Tottenham Court Road since 1818. Under Sir Ambrose Heal, the company introduced Arts and Craft style to mechanised furniture production, making it available to the middle classes. In 2001, an official guide to the archive at the Victoria & Albert Museum, wrote that for over two centuries Heal's had been known for promoting modern design and for employing talented young designers. Since 2001, the business has been owned by Wittington Investments, a company owned by the Weston family.
Sir Ambrose Heal was an English furniture designer and businessman in the first half of the 20th century. He served as the chairman of Heal's from 1913 to 1953.
Passementerie or passementarie is the art of making elaborate trimmings or edgings of applied braid, gold or silver cord, embroidery, colored silk, or beads for clothing or furnishings.
Jere Osgood was an American studio furniture maker, and teacher of furniture and woodworking. He taught for many years in the Boston University Program in Artisanry.
The Furniture Society, founded in 1996, is a membership-based, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation working to advance the art of furniture making by inspiring creativity, promoting excellence and fostering understanding of this art. The Society, based in Asheville, North Carolina, has an international membership comprising furniture makers, designers, educators, museum and gallery professionals, scholars, journalists, collectors, students and the interested public.
Michael Leon Walker is an American custom knifemaker and sculptor based in Taos, New Mexico. Walker is the inventor of more than 20 different knife mechanisms including the Walker Linerlock for which he secured a trademark in 1980.
Arthur Espenet Carpenter was a master woodworker and furniture maker in Bolinas, California known for his wishbone chair and desk with scalloped seashell sides. Self-taught, he joined the Baulines Craft Guild. He also taught had apprentices. His work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution and has been exhibited in The Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Arts and Design in New York. He was declared a “living California treasure” in 1984. He received The Furniture Society's Award of Distinction in 2001.
Rupert Williamson has been a Designer and creator of one-off furniture for over 40 years with work in many museums and public collections, together with his work written about and illustrated in many books and articles.In 1999 he received a PhD for his thesis “New Forms of Imagery in Furniture". The Reflections of a Designer working in the Craft Revival of the 1970s and beyond” together with a major collection of his designs.
Charles Counts (1934–2000) was an American potter, designer, textile artist, quilter, teacher, writer, and activist. Counts worked to preserve the art forms of his native Appalachia, and later moved to Nigeria where he taught until his death.
Cheryl R. Riley is an American artist and furniture designer. Her official website is cherylrriley.com/
