Furniture Making Intensive with Brian Boggs

Six weeks of concentrated furniture making and chairmaking in Asheville, with the opportunity to continue for an additional six weeks by mutual agreement.

Advanced processes. Direct instruction and regular review from Brian Boggs.

Presented by Boggs Bench. The selected participant will be employed by Brian Boggs Chairmakers and will develop through real production work in Brian’s professional shop.

We see a gap in the educational landscape available to furniture makers. Even the best schools and intensives place students in classroom settings designed to offer a broad range of technical learning and skill building. Some take students into professional shops to see production firsthand.

But none that we know of place the educational experience entirely within the rigor of real production.

As we transition toward becoming more of an educational organization and less focused on production, we see an opportunity to create that experience while a working professional shop is still part of our daily life.

We want to give serious makers a chance to smell the grease and sawdust of real production, help us fill actual orders, and bring their own observations and perspective to the work.

We expect to learn from this as well. Working closely with participants will help us better understand how to translate the lessons from our bench into educational experiences that land clearly and meaningfully with future students.

Brian’s approach to furniture making has evolved over more than four decades of designing and building chairs and furniture. His work reflects the philosophy at the heart of this Intensive: understanding the Why Behind the How.

Explore Brian Boggs Chairmakers →

The lessons learned here cannot be boiled down to a bulleted list, and they extend well beyond chairmaking.

What separates this intensive from employment, an internship, or a residency is that it has been designed to help independent craftspeople become stronger producers, work with greater independence, and gain greater clarity about their mission and vision as makers.

Most residencies, intensives, and advanced craft programs are tuition-based; participants pay for the opportunity to learn. This one is different. There is no tuition. We are opening the shop to one serious maker for this intensive, and we do not know whether or when we will offer it again.

Think Furniture-making Boot Camp.

You should complete this intensive significantly stronger than you entered it.

Most furniture intensives are built around an educational schedule. This one is built around the real schedule of a working shop.

The work is not staged to fit a class calendar. Chairs have to move through production, customer commitments have to be met, mistakes have consequences, and time matters.

That pressure is part of the learning.

In many courses, you build a piece of your own and take it home.

Here, what you take home is different: greater speed, stronger problem-solving skills, a clearer understanding of production, and a more realistic sense of what professional furniture making actually demands.

You Will Make Furniture

This is real production work.

The work may include

"If you think a bandsaw is mostly a machine for cutting parts roughly to shape, you will leave with a very different understanding of what it can do."

The chairs are the vehicle for the learning, not the limit of it. The habits developed here around process, accuracy, repetition, problem solving, tooling, and efficiency transfer directly into other forms of furniture making and into the way you approach your own work.

The terms of the intensive, stated plainly.

This is a paid employee position. Brian Boggs Chairmakers will handle payroll and employer payroll taxes. We understand that a serious furniture maker may already have work on their bench, clients, commitments, or a shop of their own. We are more interested in finding the right person than forcing an unrealistic start date.

You will repeat important operations enough to build speed, accuracy, and consistency, but the work will not be limited to doing the same thing for three months. Depending on what is moving through the shop, you may work across multiple chairs, different stages of production, and other custom furniture projects.

It is where consistency becomes expected rather than accidental.

The goal is not to avoid repetition.
The goal is to become better through it.

This is not an introduction to woodworking.

We are looking for someone who already has a meaningful foundation in furniture making or chairmaking and knows this is the direction they want to pursue.

The right person may be:

Schooling alone is not enough. We are looking for demonstrated experience, sound shop habits, and enough practical foundation to contribute to real production from the beginning.

Beyond that foundation, we are looking for commitment, curiosity, seriousness, and a real desire to grow as a maker.

You should leave faster, more accurate, more independent, and more thoughtful about how you make.

You will develop stronger machine and hand skills, a deeper understanding of repeatable production systems, greater confidence in solving problems, and better judgment about when a process is working and when it needs to change.

But the larger goal goes beyond technique.

We want you to leave as a stronger producer, with a clearer understanding of your own mission and vision as a maker.

The goal is not simply to know more. It is to become a stronger craftsperson.

Applicants must:

Have meaningful experience in furniture making and/or chairmaking
Be comfortable working safely and accurately in a professional woodworking shop
Have experience with common woodworking machinery and hand tools
Be able to follow instruction, accept correction, and then work independently
Be comfortable with the repetitive nature of chairmaking and willing to develop speed, consistency, and accuracy through it
Be able to commit to the initial three-month term in Asheville
Be able to relocate to Asheville for the duration of the program
Have reliable personal transportation for the entire program
Be physically capable of normal shop work

The shop is approximately seven miles from the provided housing. Reliable personal transportation is required.

If you meet these requirements, continue to the application below.

Brian will host a live Zoom Q&A about the Furniture Making Intensive. He’ll talk about how the program works, who it’s designed for, and what participants can expect.

Furniture Making Intensive with Brian Boggs

Six weeks of concentrated furniture making and chairmaking in Asheville, with the opportunity to continue for an additional six weeks by mutual agreement.

Why We're Doing This

But none that we know of place the educational experience entirely within the rigor of real production.