Welcome to A Furniture Maker’s Life

A Furniture Maker's Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’m Matt Kenney, a professional furniture maker that writes books and articles about the craft, and travels around the U.S. (and sometimes overseas) sharing my passion for it while teaching others what I’ve learned about making furniture.

Every Friday morning you get a bit of writing in your inbox. Paid subscribers also get access to furniture plans, videos from the shop, and the opportunity to have me answer your questions.


What to expect:

Making a piece of furniture is like conducting a symphony in which you also play all of the instruments. Oh, you also wrote the music. It’s a demanding craft and requires a great deal of patience, attention, and time in the shop to design and make furniture that’s genuinely beautiful and well-made. A Furniture Maker’s Life is about everything that goes into making furniture: finding inspiration to design, developing a design idea to a coherent and complete expression of beauty, figuring out how to construct it, learning how to improve your technique and skill, mastering the tool of the trade, overcoming mistakes and figuring out how to avoid them the next time, choosing lumber, and pricing your work.

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3 ways to take part in the community:

Benefits of a free subscription

  • Weekly newsletter

  • Access to the last 2 weeks of the archives

Paid subscribers get all of that plus

  • Access to the entire archive of newsletters

  • Paid-subscriber only posts and videos

  • Ability to submit questions for me to answer

  • Shop drawings for boxes, cabinets, and other pieces that I make

Founding members get all of the benefits above plus

  • 1 set of plans with instructions per year

  • Exclusive videos where I demonstrate answers to select questions that founding members have submitted

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There's more to making furniture than tools and technique. Sure, I cover those, but I also consider large issues like design, the beauty and challenge of wood, and the significance of hand-made furniture in our homes and lives.

People

I'm a professional furniture maker, author, and instructor. This craft has had an enormous and positive impact on my life, and I hope that my passion for and contributions to it inspire others to make their own furniture.