top drawer
Handmade furniture in New Mexico soothes the soul and stimulates the eye as a new generation of craftsmen evolve an enduring tradition.
Hand-crafted ponderosa pine pieces by Carpinteros furnish this home designed and built by Tierra Concepts of Santa Fe. Upholstered with a bright fabric decorated with folk art depictions, the Taos sofa has river-rock burnished edges. The Rustic Blanket chest behind the sofa recalls New Mexico during an earlier time. Photograph by Julie Dean
A wooden pin from a dining table highlights the level of detail and craftsmanship that goes into every Carpinteros piece. Photograph by Julie Dean
Carpinteros’ signature Tecolote sideboard draws inspiration from historical designs. This ponderosa pine piece features rustic detailing, with cleated doors to stabilize the wooden panels. The tapestry and vase are both sold at Carpinteros. Photograph by Julie Dean
Crafted from ponderosa pine, a Patron dining chair by Carpinteros features simple lines and a detailed gouging technique. Photograph by Julie Dean
This piece by Carpinteros features dovetail joinery. Photograph by Julie Dean
Damian Velasquez created a custom media cabinet to suit the living area of this home designed and built by architect Wristen Paschich in Albuquerque’s North Valley. The chairs were bought at Hey Jhonny Home. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
In the bedroom, Damian Velasquez’s signature piece, the Don’t Fall Down dresser, establishes a lighthearted, high-style atmosphere that carries on through the Boxy nightstand in cherry wood and the Phat Felt bed, which features oatmeal- and espresso-hued alternating panels of wool felt and a natural mill scale steel frame. Photo on the wall: Koi by Michelle Stump. Lamp from Pottery Barn. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
This TwoByThree buffet by Damian Velasquez enjoys dramatic lighting in the entry foyer of the March/Gantt residence. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
The Ling bed and a custom mirror by Damian Velasquez establish a sharp modern mood in the bedroom at the residence of Carol March and Bill Gantt in Albuquerque. Velasquez works in brushed steel with a powder coat for his original designs. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
Ling bed by Damian Velasquez Modern Handcrafted Furniture. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
TwoByThree buffet by Damian Velasquez Modern Handcrafted Furniture. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
Chairs by Damian Velasquez Modern Handcrafted Furniture. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
A Rudolfo chair nestles by a built-in, hand-adzed media center with carved pine doors in Native American motifs, all made by Ernest Thompson Furniture and shown in the home of the company’s owners, Doreen and Mike Godwin. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
In the dining room, a massive knotty alder table with carved legs by Ernest Thompson Furniture, hand-tooled leather chairs (available from the company), and a kiva fireplace set an indelible adobe tone. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
The Tahoe Lounge chair in knotty alder and the custom pine mantle and fireplace surround share center stage with a Dan Namingha painting. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
Doreen Godwin felt this great room needed a focal point other than a fireplace, so her husband, Mike, designed this impressive cherry bookcase. Creating furniture rather than built-ins “lets us stay nimble”—furniture can be removed or replaced. Ernest Thompson Furniture also created the coffee table. The Dave McGary sculpture Touch the Clouds stands tall by the chair on the right. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
Cabinet by Ernest Thompson Furniture. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
Ernest Thompson Furniture. Photograph by Kirk Gittings
A La Puerta Originals cabinet adds functional beauty in the kitchen. Constructed of reclaimed Douglas fir, the piece is topped with a salvaged carving from China. The bench also was made from reclaimed Douglas fir. Photograph by Julie Dean
This intricately carved console table and mirror by La Puerta Originals were crafted of antique fragments from the Swat valley in Pakistan. Photograph by Julie Dean
Antique carved panels originating from a hutch from Pakistan accent this one-of-a-kind piece by La Puerta Originals. Photograph by Julie Dean
La Puerta Originals. Photograph by Julie Dean
La Puerta Originals. Photograph by Julie Dean
This article first appeared in Spring II 2008 Su Casa
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The touch of the human hand draws both the eye and the heart to the many styles of the Southwest. Gently contoured surfaces, less than square corners, the weathered textures of old wood—all speak of the artisan tradition that inspires New Mexico’s architecture and design. Today, that tradition thrives as a new generation of craftsmen proudly creates handmade furniture, doors, cabinets, and other architectural elements. Some use the materials and techniques of the past; others work at the cutting edge. They produce individual, special pieces, made by man, not machine. In a digital world, that is a balm for the soul.
Carpinteros
“The unique quality of New Mexico style furniture is directly related to two-and-a-half centuries of isolation,” says Kurt Faust, a Santa Fe builder and partner in Carpinteros. “It’s like no other furniture in North America.” Highly skilled Spanish carpenters came to northern New Mexico with the first wave of colonization in 1598. They adapted their style of furniture making to a shortage of tools and to the materials of the region. As Pueblo Indians became apprentices, they added their own rich design traditions to the carved motifs. The region remained in something of a time bubble, its artistic heritage preserved, until the end of Spanish rule in 1821.
Carpinteros stays true to its northern New Mexico roots. “Some of our pieces are exact museum reproductions,” Faust explains, “but others are more of an adaptation of something that might have been done in that period.” An obvious example is scale. “People were smaller then,” he says. “They also tended to sit very straight-backed, which is not so comfortable for people today, so we angle the chair backs more.” The simple lines of the furniture fit surprisingly well with many styles, and the ability to customize each piece offers great flexibility. A chest or table made without decorative carving is perfectly at home with anything from Bauhaus to traditional.
Carpinteros has a large showroom in downtown Santa Fe, but almost every piece is made to order. “We use mostly ponderosa pine,” says Keith Gorges, a partner in the business. “It can conform to many looks and takes on some beautiful colorations.” All the wood is hand-planed, not sanded as it would be in a factory. “Each of our craftsmen also has his own river rock that is used to burnish and soften the corners and edges,” he says. Old World mortise and tenon joinery is used throughout. Sophisticated modern hardware allows drawers to slide out at a touch but is completely hidden. So much care and respect results in substantial and timeless Santa Fe furniture—the heirlooms of tomorrow.
Damian Velasquez Modern Handcrafted Furniture
The artifacts of modern design—scooters, gumball machines, and toy trucks—fill every spare corner of Damian Velasquez’s office. “I love metal that has design, that was made to last,” he says. “I guess I’m going to have to stop picking it up pretty soon.” But beyond their look, the objects have a playful quality, something that is very evident in Velasquez’s innovative, hand-crafted furniture.
Take, for instance, his Don’t Fall Down dresser, an improbable stack of five drawers that seem barely balanced. It’s modern meets whimsy. A signature piece, it’s made from welded, brushed steel and wood panels that can be either brightly colored or natural. The style began to develop when Velasquez was just a college student. “I was creative at an early age,” he says. “After I learned how to weld, I started making utilitarian items for myself like a coffee table and a bed. As people saw it, they began placing orders.” After graduation, with no job, it quickly became his career.
Velasquez didn’t study the masters of design or even set out to make furniture in the modern genre. “It grew from my own capabilities and from the materials available,” he explains. “Here in New Mexico we don’t have the resources or the industrial history of other cities. I didn’t realize that and just did my best with what I had. Because of that, I found my own style.”
In his shop in an industrial area of Albuquerque, Velasquez primarily customizes a set of designs, modifying them to suit a customer’s needs. Steel, his basic material, can be natural, with pits and scratches, or highly refined, brushed, and finished. The wood grain is a textural counterpoint as is his newest inspiration, a line of furniture called Never Felt So Good, featuring panels of dense wool felt. “I take these materials and manipulate them to incorporate form and function, and it breaks people’s ideas of what metal furniture is about,” he says.
In a rack hang several very cool fixed-gear bikes Velasquez has made in his spare time. He sees the fun in function and has the talent to take it to an entirely original level.
Ernest Thompson Furniture
Mike Godwin bends over the base of an enormous, nearly finished bookcase. As he walked through the workroom, he spotted a flaw in a row of tiny inlaid panels. “The grain is going the wrong way in some of these,” he points out. “It has to be the same in all of them or you’ll be able to see it.” This degree of attention to detail has made Ernest Thompson Furniture a success for more than 30 years.
Mike and his wife, Doreen, looking for an escape from Wall Street, bought the business from its founder in 1990. “Ernest Thompson was known for high-quality handmade furniture,” he says, “but we’ve diversified since then.” That’s an understatement. The large Albuquerque showroom is filled with dozens of pieces that can be customized and built to order, and that’s only the beginning. “We don’t really build Southwestern furniture,” Godwin says. “We build furniture for the Southwest. That includes classic Santa Fe style, Spanish Colonial, rustic cabin furniture, and we do lots of European style antique reproductions. We even did the furniture for a hotel in Arizona that had a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright influences, so it had a very contemporary feel. We can literally build any type of wood furniture or cabinetry.”
Ernest Thompson has showrooms in Albuquerque and Scottsdale, Arizona. A big business, it employs 30 to 40 workers in a 20,000-square-foot facility, but they do all the work by hand to individual specifications.
Godwin does most of the design himself. “Before I switched to business in college, I was an engineering major,” he explains. “That’s really paid off. I was always something of a frustrated architect, and I’ve found that I have a creative side, too.” He puts some special detail in each piece. “You have to,” he says. “That’s what sets good design apart from OK design.” As always at Ernest Thompson, it’s the little things that transform a piece of furniture into a lifetime treasure.
La Puerta Originals
The entry hall in Sarah Russell’s home feels like a cathedral. The ceiling vaults dramatically up, light shafts through a stained-glass window, and massive pieces of furniture look like they came straight from a Spanish castle. “I think it works so well,” Sarah says. “It turned out just as we imagined it.” In fact, most of the elaborately carved wood in the huge cabinet and long table came from Pakistan, and the pieces were designed and built by La Puerta Originals in Santa Fe.
Globalization is nothing new. The Swat valley in Pakistan, an area with a multifaceted artistic heritage, was an important part of the ancient Silk Road trading route between Europe and Asia. The Swat artisans influenced and were influenced by Moorish merchants, who took the style to Spain and eventually to the New World. So a door from Pakistan can be a perfect fit in New Mexico.
It takes an inventive eye to make this concept work, and that belongs to Scott Coleman, founder of La Puerta Originals. “After Scott graduated from Southern California Institute of Architecture, he came to Santa Fe,” says his wife and president of the company, Melissa Coleman. “He was building custom homes, but when he traveled, he saw beautiful antique wood doors in marketplaces. He just couldn’t bear to see them discarded, so he began bringing them back.”
What began as a small shop in Scott’s garage is now a vast lot stocked with wooden doors, chests, cabinets, columns, and even canoes from all over the world. Scott incorporates these lovely artifacts with reclaimed wood into original, one-of-a-kind doors, furniture, and cabinets. Many are made specifically to fit unusual spaces. “If you want something that is distinctively yours and has your ideas in it, that’s our specialty,” Melissa says. After Scott’s design is complete, each piece is constructed by hand, using simple tools. “We even hand-saw all our wood,” Melissa adds. “You just don’t get the same look and feel using a machine.”
A piece from La Puerta Originals is recycling in its most elegant form.
Award-winning journalist Marsha McEuen is a freelance writer and editor based in her hometown, Santa Fe.
Resources
Carpinteros Santa Fe, 505/988-1229 or 800/443-3448, carpinterossantafe.com.
Damian Velasquez Modern Handcrafted Furniture Albuquerque, 505/884-5200 or 888/326-4268, modernhandcrafted.com.
Ernest Thompson Furniture Albuquerque, 505/344-1994 or 800/568-2344 and Scottsdale, Arizona, 480/905-0727 or 866/905-0727, ernestthompson.com.
La Puerta Originals Santa Fe, 505/984-8164, lapuertaoriginals.com.