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The Antiques

of Tomorrow

by Elizabeth Ferry

When you hear the word master,

you think of old — old masters.

The members of the New

Hampshire Furniture Masters Associa-

tion have one thing in common with the

old masters: they are creating works of

art that may very well stop you in your

tracks, magnify your senses and leave

you speechless. They create works of

art that inspire awe. The relationship

between maker and material is almost

palpable in the finished piece.

These are not “old”

masters — the master furniture makers

of New Hampshire tend towards the

middle age. They are alive and well

and living in small towns, including

Newport, Wilmot and Warner. But

they, like all great masters, will be

remembered and admired long into the

future: they are creating the antiques

of tomorrow.

For its small population, New

Hampshire has an inordinate number of

woodworkers — second in the United

States only to the Seattle, Wa., area.

Several organizations in the state

promote craftsmanship and woodwork-

ing. This particular group — New

Hampshire Furniture Masters

Association (NHFMA) — was formed

in 1993 specifically for the recognition

and advancement of furniture making.

The annual auction, held each year

in October in Wentworth-by-the-Sea,

attracts bidders from around the

country. As Ted Blachly of Warner

says, “Wood has a pull on people.”

A detail of Ted Blachly’s loveseat made of

curly maple

Terry Moore’s chest of drawers made of

figured makore, satinwood and rosewood.

A detail of Jon Siegel’s “Elliptori” wood-

turned mahogany contemporary table

Kearsarge Magazine • Special Section: Home Improvement • Spring 2008

While waiting for his legal papers

to be processed in 1975, Moore started

doing repairs on his in-laws’ rental

apartments. One needed a new kitchen,

It all began in Wales with the dream

of becoming a musician. “I was born in

a family of eight children,” Moore says.

He left school early, figuring that musi-

cians don’t need a

college education.

He still recalls the

boredom of working

in jobs such as coal

mining and as a tire

fitter. After work, he

would pursue his

musical interests —

guitar and vocals.

In 1973, he trav-

eled to London to see

a rock opera called

“Lonesome Stone.”

Moore joined the

international cast

shortly afterwards as

“a pinch-hit musician

playing bass, lead gui-

tar, keyboards, singing

and with a little acting part.” The show

toured Europe successfully for a year and

a half, including three months at the

Rainbow Theater in London. (The

Rainbow has a special place in the hearts

of rock lovers; Eric Clapton recorded his

live album there.)

Promoters brought the show and its

cast to the United States, where its recep-

tion was a different tune, so to speak.

The show went bankrupt in Kansas City,

Mo. Moore was married to an American

member of the cast at the time, and the

couple made short-term plans to spend

Christmas with her family in Newport.

And he’s been in the area ever since.

Terry Moore

Balance and Symmetry,

Refinement and

Restraint

Ask Terry Moore how he became a

furniture maker and he says with a

laugh, “That’s a story for a soap opera!”

Or maybe he means rock opera.

Moore sits in his Newport studio

with a recently completed piece, Ebony

Harlequin, commissioned by the League

of N.H. Craftsmen for their permanent

collection. The meticulously matched

points of interlocking diamond shapes

— cut from tiger maple and ebony

veneer — embellish the front, side and

back panels of this custom piece.

You would never guess that the

original sketch was drawn on a napkin,

or that there are no blueprints for the

intricate design, which includes gently

bowed door profiles and a lift-off top

that reveals an additional compartment.

A self-taught

craftsman, Moore

began his woodwork-

ing career building

kitchens in Newport.

Thirty years later, his

peers and his patrons

recognize him as a

master of propor-

tions, design and

workmanship.

Demi-Lune Commode in fiddleback mahogany and rosewood

which Moore constructed after reading

a library book. “Six kitchens later I said,

‘I’m going to hang out my own shingle.’

You have to love America — I never

could have done that in England or

Wales,” he says.

Moore points to three very different

influences for his early work: Korean

furniture design, the French Art Deco

movement and Edward Barnsley, a 20th

century English craftsman who reinter-

preted Georgian period furniture. Moore

describes his work as a distillation of

these influences. Korean design influences

the balance and symmetry in Moore’s

design. French Art Deco is echoed in his

use of fine veneer. Barnsley

inspires refinement and restraint.

Moore builds his forms in

hardwood, such as cherry, and

he decorates in exotic — but not

endangered — patterned wood

veneers. And he creates the

design of the veneer inlays as

he builds the piece. “It’s like

writing music,” Moore says.

“It evolves and changes as you

are working.”

ä ANTIQUES OF TOMORROW

continued on page 88

Harlequin Desk, inspired by Picasso’s

Harlequin series, in curly maple and

dyed tupelo.

Lectern in Brazilian rosewood

and Vermont curly maple

Spring 2008 • Special Section: Home Improvement • Kearsarge Magazine

ANTIQUES OF TOMORROW continued from page 87

knocking on a fellow woodworker’s

door and asking, ‘What do you think of

this dovetail joint?’ ” he says.

A love of trees — the whole tree —

is characteristic of Blachly’s work. He

explains the term “flitch sawn” —

“when a tree or a log is sawn up and the

pieces are kept together.” The resulting

wood to work in. Each species has its

own characteristics. Their differences

are interesting to me.”

That’s not to say that all of the

wood he uses is from local sources;

Blachly often acquires wood from wood

dealers. One is in Pennsylvania, another

in Oregon whom he communicates with

via the Internet.

“When he has some-

thing he thinks

might interest me,

he e-mails photos.

He wets down the

wood so I can see

the grain. I sit here

at the computer and

scroll through the

pictures with a

mouse,” he says.

Before he

became a furniture

maker, Blachly

worked in “the old

house trade.” He is,

by nature, a person

of patience and one

who pays close attention to detail.

Deconstructing and reconstructing old

houses “where nothing is square” pro-

vided a good environment for honing his

problem-solving skills.

In the late 1980s, the Guild of

New Hampshire Woodworkers

(www.gnhw.org) formed in Warner.

Blachly went to all of the meetings. “I

had this interest; I was just soaking it

up. I didn’t have any qualms about

Ted Blachly

Freshness of Design

The town of Warner was incorpo-

rated in 1774. Warner’s colonial history

is still in evidence in the form of old

houses and barns.

Two hundred years later there was

another migration — the back-to-the-

land movement. Ted Blachly was part

of it.

The natural patterns of the wood are unified with the flowing

form of this love seat made of curly sugar maple.

collection naturally contains wood of

similar color and grain figuring. Blachly

prizes the relatedness — not the same-

ness — of flitch-sawn boards. He uses it

to its advantage in single items as well as

in sets of multiple furniture pieces.

New England furniture design

caught Blachly’s attention as a child.

Later, the clean, minimalist lines of

Danish and Japanese styles influenced

his work. But he notes “after you make

a few pieces, those exact references

aren’t there anymore. The pieces are

coming out of you.”

“It can be a whole range of things

that influence the work,” he says,

including nonvisual inspiration, such as

feelings and even gesture. The

inspiration for a recent chest of drawers

was the stance of a person standing

casually with arms folded.

“I did a loose sketch of it and wrote

beside it ‘don’t change.’ When a design

pops out of my sketchbook, I try to

retain, through all the building stages,

the freshness of the original design,”

Blachly says.

After studying art and philosophy

at New England College in Henniker,

Blachly landed in Warner. He reopened

old fields, then designed, built and fin-

ished the interior of his house and studio

on Birch Hill. He points to kitchen

and living room furniture, then out the

window: “The wood for that table came

from this land; the wood for those

cabinets from the hill over

there,” he says.

Recently, a landowner

in New London cut down

a large butternut tree.

Knowing that Blachly was

a furniture maker, he gave

him a call. The tree, now

sawn into planks, is drying

under cover outside

Blachly’s shop. “I try to

select really good wood

based on natural color and

figuring for my furniture

design,” he says. “People

often ask if I have a favorite

This Demi-Lune table made of bubinga and

rosewood has a single drawer in the center.

ä ANTIQUES OF TOMORROW

continued on page 90

Kearsarge Magazine • Special Section: Home Improvement • Spring 2008

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Spring 2008 • Special Section: Home Improvement • Kearsarge Magazine

ANTIQUES OF TOMORROW continued from page 88

Though he’s had a number of jobs

over the years — including 10 years of

teaching industrial arts at Proctor

Academy in Andover — Siegel remem-

bers being mesmerized the first time he

saw a lathe in use. His father, also a

woodworker, responded by buying his

14-year-old son a lathe from Sears,

Roebuck and Company. “I grabbed on

to wood turning like a bulldog and

didn’t let go,” he says.

Siegel’s portfolio includes furniture

such as a trumpet-shaped coffee table, a

glass-topped rosette dining room table

and a rush-seat chair. His designs include

early colonial recreations as well as his

own contemporary style.

The scale of Siegel’s woodturning,

from porches to pool cues, is amazing.

One machine, which he restored, is a

5,000-pound, 120-year-old pattern

maker’s lathe made in Fitchburg, Mass.

This lathe can hold wood up to 4 feet in

diameter or 12 feet in length and weigh-

ing hundreds of pounds. “The people

who made it wouldn’t be the least bit

surprised to know that it’s being used a

century later, because that’s what they

intended,” he says. “Not all of my

machines are ancient, but the ones that

work the best are.”

Besides furniture, Siegel makes

turned parts for stairways, such as balus-

ters and newel posts, porch posts and

architectural columns. In many older

homes, the original pieces were made

by hand. When parts or pieces get bro-

ken, it is unlikely that the homeowner

can find matching replacement parts.

That’s when a woodturner like Siegel has

irreplaceable

knowledge and

skill. He always

turns an extra

piece for every

job because, as

he puts it, “stair-

way collisions

involving vacu-

um cleaners or

kids keep on

happening.”

Jon Siegel

Wood Turning Specialist

Jon Siegel is passionate about the

history of New England as the cradle of

the American Revolution. “I’m originally

from the Midwest,” he says. “I never felt

there the sense of history that is here

among the stone walls and old mills in

New Hampshire.”

Siegel created reproduction turnings of

classic columns for a porch restoration at

Highland Lake Farm in Andover.

At the Tilton Mansion, Siegel created

eight new replacement balusters to match

the existing ones of this Victorian stairway.

Perhaps the most unusual placement

of Siegel’s work is at Belmont Park on

Long Island, home to the third leg of

horse racing’s venerable Triple Crown

trophy. A finial — made of mahogany

and covered in gold leaf — marks each

furlong and half-furlong on the

racetrack. After 100 years of outdoor

exposure, the original finials decayed.

Siegel turned the replacements, each

measuring 2 feet in diameter, in his shop.

In addition to architectural and

furniture turning, Siegel is an inventor.

“A lot of old books have photos of tools

that were used historically but are no

longer available,” he says. That prompted

him to start making and inventing wood

lathe accessories, which led to a whole

new business. One of his inventions is

patented. He sells his products to

woodturners around the country.

In the general field of woodworking

and within the smaller field of furniture

making, Siegel has carved his niche as a

woodturner.

Turning wood involves a machine

called a lathe. (A lathe can turn wood or

metal; Siegel uses both types in his shop.)

The wood stock — sometimes a single

piece of wood, sometimes several pieces

glued together to create the appropriate

mass — rotates on the lathe. Holding the

chisel in his hands and bracing it on the

tool rest,

Siegel applies

the tool to the

rotating wood,

carving it into

the shape he

desires. This

rotation con-

tributes to the

high degree of

symmetry char-

acteristic of

turned wood.

While writing this article, Elizabeth

Ferry noticed a delightful correspondence

between working with wood and with

words: words are flitch sawn (taken from

a single dictionary), turned (to create

literary symmetry), and cut and pasted

(like veneer).

For a queen size cherry bed, Siegel turned each post

and the headboard from a single piece of cherry wood.

Kearsarge Magazine • Special Section: Home Improvement • Spring 2008

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