Portraits by Kim Ashford
The comfort and quality of handcrafted wooden furniture still reigns supreme, despite the replicas, knock-offs, and mass-produced products now available at a discount. For its longevity, convenience, and inherent personality, handcrafted wood pieces still have a market. Technology may push us toward a cheaper, more efficient future, but our local woodworkers keep us grounded on Earth. Here are four Baton Rouge-area craftsmen making their mark in wood.
Jay Cudd: Ebeniste Restoration and Woodworks conservationist, historian, ébéniste ebenisterestorationwoodworks.com
“There is a lot of planned obsolescence built into manufactured furniture,” Jay Cudd said. “It looks great, but it’s not going to withstand any kind of wear over the decades.”
Cudd’s woodshop, Ebeniste Restoration and Woodworks, located on North Street in Baton Rouge, is filled with wooden artifacts, some centuries old: furniture of Spanish and French design, chairs, cabinets, bedframes. Some with the leather hide of a long-dead animal still attached. Some valued into the tens-of-thousands of dollars.
Though Cudd is frequently commissioned to build modern furniture, much of his work focuses on the restoration of history. Thus the name, “ébéniste,” a French term applied to seventeenth-century European woodworkers who used dense ebony woods.
Today, these historical pieces are the mainstay in the South, and keeping them alive is Cudd’s “meat and potatoes.”
Restoration work takes a conservationist’s approach, Cudd explained.
There is a lot that can go wrong when you’re working with a piece of furniture that was created centuries ago. The slightest mistake can mean permanent damage to an historical artifact. Especially when said artifact needs to be repurposed, widening a centuries-old bed frame from a double to a king, for instance.
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The work that goes into restoring antique furniture is not unlike creating new furniture, except that the skills and knowledge-base are broader. Cudd has logged thousands of hours at the Louisiana State University library studying the work of European and Acadian furniture builders to better understand historical approaches, including traditional joinery methods, veneers, wood glues, and even hand tools of the period.
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The work that goes into restoring antique furniture is not unlike creating new furniture, except that the skills and knowledge-base are broader. Cudd has logged thousands of hours at the Louisiana State University library studying the work of European and Acadian furniture builders to better understand historical approaches, including traditional joinery methods, veneers, wood glues, and even hand tools of the period.
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The work that goes into restoring antique furniture is not unlike creating new furniture, except that the skills and knowledge-base are broader. Cudd has logged thousands of hours at the Louisiana State University library studying the work of European and Acadian furniture builders to better understand historical approaches, including traditional joinery methods, veneers, wood glues, and even hand tools of the period.
“You can’t just spray lacquer on something that has shellac on it or a finish from a certain period. If you alter that it destroys the value,” Cudd said.” You want to be able to go back decades later and repair it.”
Andrew Moran: Midcity Handmade urban lumberjack, recycler, hoarder midcityhandmade.com
Andrew Moran eyed his stacks of lumber from the back of his shop. The piles include sycamore from across the road, pecan from a tree in Plaquemine, and a cypress stump that was buried seventeen feet under Jefferson Avenue in New Orleans. “I can tell you where everything in my backyard came from,” Moran said of his collection, “even the address to some of it.”
Each stack of wood has its own story to tell and a life that Moran extends by crafting unique pieces of furniture at his business, Midcity Handmade, an old gas station-turned-woodshop in Baton Rouge.
Much of Moran’s work uses recycled wood found within city limits that would otherwise be thrown out, including urban trees and salvaged wood from razed buildings. The local lumber mills don’t bother with urban wood out of fear of damaging their saws on nails, wiring, or other foreign objects, Moran said. “There are a lot of trees being removed out there,” he said. “I enjoy seeing them go to good use instead of the landfill.”
Before Moran mills his wood, each piece is dried in a kiln built out of recycled cooler panels; he then displays the wood for clients.
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A build begins by cutting, or “slabbing,” a log by its length with Moran’s Alaskan sawmill (nicknamed Bertha). Each tree has its own unique pattern, Moran explained as he caressed the surface of a nearly finished—and enormous—conference table whose visual rhythm and width took some time to get right. “It’s an imperfect building material,” Moran said. “It’s got a mind of its own.” Every piece goes through its own creative evolution, whether it’s a table, cabinet, chair, or credenza, a process that is as artistic as it is labor intensive.
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A build begins by cutting, or “slabbing,” a log by its length with Moran’s Alaskan sawmill (nicknamed Bertha). Each tree has its own unique pattern, Moran explained as he caressed the surface of a nearly finished—and enormous—conference table whose visual rhythm and width took some time to get right. “It’s an imperfect building material,” Moran said. “It’s got a mind of its own.” Every piece goes through its own creative evolution, whether it’s a table, cabinet, chair, or credenza, a process that is as artistic as it is labor intensive.
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A build begins by cutting, or “slabbing,” a log by its length with Moran’s Alaskan sawmill (nicknamed Bertha). Each tree has its own unique pattern, Moran explained as he caressed the surface of a nearly finished—and enormous—conference table whose visual rhythm and width took some time to get right. “It’s an imperfect building material,” Moran said. “It’s got a mind of its own.” Every piece goes through its own creative evolution, whether it’s a table, cabinet, chair, or credenza, a process that is as artistic as it is labor intensive.
Moran’s first piece—a bookshelf he built eight years ago—has since turned into a passion for local materials. He joked there’s a hint of the hoarder in his collection of lumber, but so long as he doesn’t refuse to sell to his steady stream of customers, intervention is unnecessary.
Ford Thomas: Benchworks LLC wooden modernist, horticulturalst, maestro of color fordthomasfurniture.com
If you’re not paying attention, Ford Thomas’ workshop is easy to miss among the vacant lots of Baton Rouge’s Mid City. A closer look, and the ten-thousand-square-foot warehouse, built in 1918, is literally buzzing with the sound of band saws and machinery. “With a shop like I have, there is nothing that scares me,” Thomas said through the sawdust and noise.
Thomas’ foray into woodworking began as a means to build his own furniture during college in the late ’70s. Fast forward thirty-five years, and the craft has become a full-time job, creating residential, corporate, and church furniture. Though Thomas completed his college degree in horticulture, he hasn’t looked back.
“You know, I guess I could say I’ve been there and done that after a number of years, but I still love doing what I do.”
His work has been riding the crest of the contemporary American woodworking scene since about the time the genre took off in the ‘70s. There wasn’t much reference material before then, Thomas explained, except for Fine Wood Working, first published in 1975.
In Louisiana, much of the market for handcrafted wooden furniture still revolves around the traditional forms, highly ornate and decorative works that resemble Victorian era, Art Nouveau, and Neoclassical works. Up until the ‘60s, the majority of American woodworking followed this trend.
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But the aesthetic of modern furniture caught up by the ‘70s, and as the American woodworking scene blossomed, woodworkers were starting to push the bounds of their material, Thomas said. His work features the clean, precise lines of modern metallic furniture, but with finely sanded wooden pieces patterned together from a rich pallette of two or three café-colored woods. This combination of modern design and natural beauty is one of many design fundamentals in contemporary woodworking.
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But the aesthetic of modern furniture caught up by the ‘70s, and as the American woodworking scene blossomed, woodworkers were starting to push the bounds of their material, Thomas said. His work features the clean, precise lines of modern metallic furniture, but with finely sanded wooden pieces patterned together from a rich pallette of two or three café-colored woods. This combination of modern design and natural beauty is one of many design fundamentals in contemporary woodworking.
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But the aesthetic of modern furniture caught up by the ‘70s, and as the American woodworking scene blossomed, woodworkers were starting to push the bounds of their material, Thomas said. His work features the clean, precise lines of modern metallic furniture, but with finely sanded wooden pieces patterned together from a rich pallette of two or three café-colored woods. This combination of modern design and natural beauty is one of many design fundamentals in contemporary woodworking.
“We’re a composite of what we’ve been exposed to. You’re always looking to do something that’s unique to you,” said Thomas.
Mike Gennaro: Barndog Mill, LLC chicken farmer, marketer, artist barndogmill.com
As the last hours of sunlight stream through the twisted oak branches, Mike Gennaro points to his woodshop, Barndog Mill, a small building in the backyard of his residence in Zachary.
The building was a garden shed before Gennaro converted it into a woodworking shop last year. The X-braces on the doors are the giveaway; so is Gennaro’s vegetable garden and chicken coop. No one leaves without taking a few eggs home.
Relatively new to the woodworking scene in Louisiana, Gennaro has already established a market for small to mid-sized woodworking projects, crafting armoires, desks, credenzas, and even custom carved signs.
If there’s one thing he prides himself on, it’s the customer experience. “Let’s get the dream on paper and then we’ll build it. Even if it’s a commercial build, my question is still, ‘What are you thinking about?’”
For Gennaro, the influence of his father’s artistic leanings is unmistakable. His dad surrounded him with art in their home on Lake Pontchartrain, whether it was music, paintings, sculptures, or furniture built from river driftwood.
Those habits found their way into Gennaro’s work ethic too. In the early morning, he can be found meditating in the quiet of his property, playing piano, guitar, or drums, or listening to music while hammering away at his work—maybe music by Fleet Foxes, Dr. Dog, or Milky Chance. “Real music,” Gennaro said.
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“It all culminates into this notion of
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“It all culminates into this notion of
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“It all culminates into this notion of
To paraphrase legendary Louisiana architect A. Hays Town: “The way that Southern men express themselves is through architecture,” Gennaro said. “I love that.”
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