History
Brian Boggs
“The story of a chairmaker, a studio, and the ideas that grew from them.”
From a small shop in Berea, Kentucky, to four decades of furniture design and making, this section traces some of the people, experiences, and questions that shaped the work—and the teaching, writing, and tool development that grew from it.
Timeline
Primary Entry Point
Four decades of making, teaching, innovation, and influence.
Explore the major milestones, turning points, projects, organizations, tools, and ideas that shaped Brian Boggs’ work.
Explore the Legacy
Archive Collections
Early Shops
Origins
Explore ➜
The first years in Berea, Kentucky, the evolution of the studio, and the foundations of the work.
Greenwood Global
Field Work
Explore ➜
The story of teaching sustainable woodworking and forestry in Honduras and Peru.
Tool Innovation
Making
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The development of the shave horse, spokeshaves, bending systems, fixtures, and shop-made tools.
Teaching & Mentorship
Teaching
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Workshops, demonstrations, schools, apprenticeships, and the transfer of knowledge.
Writing & Publications
Writing
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Articles, essays, interviews, publications, and contributions to the woodworking community.
Chairs in the Wild
Community
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The global community of makers influenced by Boggs chairmaking traditions.
Historical Archive
Archive
Explore ➜
Photographs, slides, documents, sketches, and source material preserved from throughout the years.
History
Brian Boggs
From a small shop in Berea, Kentucky, to four decades of furniture design and making, this section traces some of the people, experiences, and questions that shaped the work—and the teaching, writing, and tool development that grew from it.
- Making & design
- Teaching
- People
- Writing & press
- Community
- Life & place
- Awards
- Generosity
- Digital & online
Childhood
age ~9
Second grade, Weaverville, NC
A teacher handed her students shapes and told them to make a picture. His impressed her enough that she told his mother to enroll him in art classes. By year one, he'd been moved out of the kids' class and into the adult one. He stayed with painting and drawing for years, but two dimensions never let him tell a story, only represent one.
Origins
Early 20s
age ~20
Berea College, Kentucky
He enrolled hoping to take woodworking courses, but those weren't available to freshmen, so he studied French and philosophy instead, and dropped out after a year. He didn't need the degree. He already knew what he wanted to do.
Life & place
Early 20s
age ~20
Two borrowed books
James Krenov's The Fine Art of Cabinet Making and John (later Jenny) Alexander's Make a Chair from a Tree. Krenov showed him furniture could be art. Alexander showed him he didn't need a machine-filled shop to make it: a sledgehammer and a small box of hand tools would do, straight from a log in the woods.
Influence
1981
age 22
First hickory bark seat
Following Jenny Alexander’s Make a Chair from a Tree, Brian cut and peeled his first hickory bark to weave the seat of a stool he had made. He and his first wife lived beside the woods, and a neighbor let him peel a hickory tree in exchange for the firewood.
Craft Influence
1982
age 23
The first chair, Berea, Kentucky
A log and about $50 in old hand tools, in his own backyard. He got an order for six chairs from a neighbor as soon as he finished the first one. He has never been without an order since. Built more than 300 chairs before he owned a single power tool.
Making
1982
age 23
The first shave horse, built from his father's fence
Built from planks pulled off a fence on his father's horse farm: whatever was on hand, nothing bought for the purpose. No ratchet, no adjustment for a bad back, none of what came later. It just held the wood steady, and that was enough to get three hundred chairs out of a backyard shop. The redesign people know from Fine Woodworking was still years off.
Tools
Early 1980s
age 24
Making his own tools
No chisel yet, let alone a spokeshave. Chopping mortises with a sharpened screwdriver, drilling holes with an old bit brace. That scarcity sparked a lifelong instinct: if the tool doesn't exist, make it. The first was a curved spokeshave, shaped with a hacksaw and a hand-cranked grinder.
Tools
1984s
age 32
Began Making His Own Spokeshaves
As Brian refined the Boggs Chair, he also began designing and making the tools he needed to build it. He produced approximately 200 of these early spokeshaves by hand. The design was later manufactured by Veritas and, in a subsequent iteration, by Lie Nielsen.
Tools
1985
age 26
First splayed the legs
One of the earliest real departures from Alexander's plan: a change in stance and rake that became part of the chair's signature look.
Design
1987
age 28
The Workbench Book
Scott Landis features the shop as a case study. It's the first time this work appears in a published book. The book also features his first ratchet-adjustment shaving horse.
Press
1988
age 29
Met Sam Maloof, Harvey Mudd conference
Late summer, 1988. Brian was 29. He met Sam Maloof, MacArthur Genius Grant winner and the most celebrated furniture maker in America, at the Harvey Mudd woodworking conference in Claremont, California. Maloof became a collector of Brian's chairs and a genuine, lasting friend. Photo is from a later visit, Sam holding one of Brian's own spokeshaves.
People
1989
age 30
Kentucky Crafts
Phyllis George Brown's book on the region's craft tradition, the first of several to feature the work.
Press
1989–2007
age 30
Finding the Form
The Boggs Chair is a ladderback with a woven hickory bark seat, and it became the center of Brian’s work during this era. He spent the better part of two decades refining the back, the legs, and the seat structure. He often told people at craft fairs, “It’s the best chair you can make.”
Brian taught the chair and trained others to build and teach it. Those instructors, in turn, taught new generations of chairmakers using the methods, jigs, and bending forms developed in Brian’s shop. As the chair spread through the woodworking community, people naturally began calling it “the Boggs Chair.” The name was never formally assigned. It grew out of common usage and reflected the chair’s recognizable design and origins.
When the Cio Chair was introduced in 2019 or 2020, the earlier ladderback needed a name to distinguish it within the Boggs collection, so Melanie named it the Boggs Berea Chair. But within the wider chairmaking community, it had long been, and remains, the Boggs Chair.
1990
age 31
The chair becomes its own design
By now it had moved well past what Alexander's book taught him: splayed, rotated back legs, proportions and a rake tuned to how a body actually sits, choices that were his rather than borrowed. This is the chair still being built today, by chairmakers all over the world, later formalized as the Boggs Berea Chair, and grown since into a full line: side chair, arm chair, bar stool, rocker.
Design
1990
age 31
Twenty-five miles of hickory bark
By about 1990, Brian had woven more than 1,000 seats, both for his own chairs and for chairs he was hired to re-seat. Along the way, he passed a remarkable milestone: more than 25 miles (40 kilometers) of hickory bark cut by hand and woven by hand into chair seats.
But every trip to the woods made one thing clearer. There was a physical limit to how long he could continue harvesting and processing bark this way.
Craft Turning point
1990s
age 32
Designed the first Boggs shave horse
Redesigned this centuries-old tool so it could adapt to any body, including his own aching back. The full story lives on ShavingHorse.com.
Tools
Early 1990s
Searching for a better way to process bark
Faced with the limits of processing bark entirely by hand, Brian began working with retired machinist David Nash, whose daughter Rachel was a well-known basket maker. Their first machine could split bark and wind it into rolls, but it did little to reduce the total labor involved.
Over the next several years, Brian and David worked piece by piece to mechanize the process. David died in 1994 before they reached that goal, but Brian continued experimenting, drawing on what David had taught him about building machinery from readily available parts.
Innovation
1993
age 34
Co-founded Greenwood Global
Brian Boggs played a pivotal, trail-blazing role in shaping GreenWood's innovative model of sustainable forestry and community forest enterprise in Latin America. Beginning in 1993, Brian and Curtis Buchanan applied traditional hand-tool technologies in off-the-grid villages in Honduras and the Peruvian Amazon. Introducing the shaving horse, drawknife, spokeshave and pole lathe, they trained local artisans in the design and construction of green-wood chairs and other quality wood products, harvested from well-managed forests. Responding to the needs of remote communities, this unique artisan enterprise provides local incentives to manage and protect the diverse tropical forests upon which those communities--and the rest of the world--depend. Their cutting-edge efforts are now sustained by multiple generations of artisans and local instructors, some of whom they initially trained.
Community
1993
age 34
America's Traditional Crafts
Robert Shaw's book, another marker of the craft world starting to take notice.
Press
1994
age 35
Built an addition onto the Lester Street house
Berea, Kentucky. The long run of five identical windows on the shop side of the building, the workbench and tools visible through the glass, marks the point where his work took a more serious focus, broadening into tools, chairs, writing, and teaching.
Life & place
Summer 1995
age 36
“A Chair Built for Comfort,” Home Furniture
Written by Brian himself, and the chair reaches a national audience on the magazine's cover for the first time.
Writing
Early 1996
age 38
The bark machine comes together
By 1996, Brian had developed a machine that could take a whole slab of bark, cut it into splints, split those splints into layers, and wind both layers while automatically compensating for the growing diameter of the rolls.
Surprisingly, the machine never consistently beat Brian’s hand-cutting speed. What it changed was the business. Employees could process the bark, part of each harvest could be sold to pay for the work, and the shop could put up a year’s supply while maintaining cash flow.
Innovation
October 1996
age 37
“Evolution of a Chair,” Home Furniture
Also written by Brian, tracing the chair's development from an anonymous early-1900s Appalachian original through his own early work to his current design at the time. This issue's cover ran a different story, a European oak wardrobe. Photo: Boyd Hagen for Home Furniture magazine.
Writing
1997
age 38
Designed the Sculpted Fanback armchair
A design so advanced the tools and technology of the era made it brutally hard to produce well. Kept in the portfolio anyway: a revision of it, twenty years later, would win a Good Design Award.
Design
1998
age 39
National profile
Woodwork magazine profile, plus two book features: The Art of Chair-Making (Kerry Pierce) and The Workshop Book (Scott Landis).
Press
1999
age 40
A New Breed of Shaving Horse
Fine Woodworking #139 brings the decade-old shave horse redesign to a national audience for the first time, with drawings so other woodworkers could build their own.
Press
2001
age 42
The Chairmaker's Workshop
Drew Langsner's book features the work, credited as a contributor on technique.
Press
2001
age 42
Brian’s Rocker Featured on The Art of the Band Saw
Brian’s wovenback rocker appeared on the cover of Mark Duginske’s The Art of the Band Saw: Award Winning Designs. The recognition came years before Brian became widely known for his own work with the bandsaw.
Press
2002
age 43
Soup Up Your Spokeshave
Fine Woodworking #158, his first piece for Fine Woodworking specifically; Home Furniture had already been running his own writing since 1995.
Writing
2003–2005
age 44
Lie-Nielsen video series
Hickory Bark from Tree to Chair and Drawknives, Spokeshaves and Travishers: A Chairmaker's Tool Kit mark the start of a real teaching partnership, and the year the Boggs spokeshave went into worldwide production.
Teaching
2004
age 45
America's Heart & Soul
A Walt Disney Pictures documentary features the shop as one of its artisan segments.
Media
April 2004
age 45
Popular Woodworking names the Boggs Spokeshave its Editor's Choice
Tested head-to-head against six other spokeshaves (Anant, Kunz, Lie-Nielsen's own Small Bronze, Stanley, and two Veritas models). At $125 it was the most expensive tool in the test. The review called it worth the price anyway.
Awards
2006–2008
age 47
A run of trade recognition
Top 10 New Tools of the Year and an Editor's Choice Award from Fine Woodworking (Boggs/Lie-Nielsen spokeshave), and Best in Show at the Fine Furnishings Shows in Milwaukee and Providence.
Awards
2007
age 48
Chairmaking & Design
Jeff Miller's book (Taunton Press), and “Talking Shop with Brian Boggs” in Fine Woodworking #190, now a reference point for other chairmakers.
Press
2007
age 48
The Woodwright's Shop, Season 37
Appeared on Roy Underhill's PBS series (Season 37, Episode 11), the most prestigious platform in traditional American woodworking. Roy's own words afterward: “During that shoot with Brian I learned more about wood and tools in those minutes than I had in decades before. He may well be the clearest thinker on the cutting edge. A sharp mind in Mr. Boggs.”
Media
2008–2017
age 49
Building the Business
Everything up to this point had been about the chair. This decade is about the business that could carry the chair, and the ideas behind it, forward
2008
age 49
Move to Asheville
After the Kentucky years, settling the business back in his hometown region of western North Carolina.
Life & place
2008 & after
The bark machine continues
After moving to North Carolina in 2008, Brian no longer had the same access to suitable hickory trees and eventually moved away from hickory bark seating. The bark machine continued on, however, passing first to Eric Cannizzaro and later to Shea Alexander, extending the life of a process Brian had spent years developing.
Legacy Continuity
2008
age 49
Brian and Melanie meet
Through an online dating service. Early in the relationship, Brian hires Melanie's consulting company to help build a strategic plan.
People
2009
age 50
Melanie becomes a business partner
Together they rebuild the company as Brian Boggs Chairmakers, opening a 4,000-square-foot shop in Biltmore Village.
People
2010
Age 51
Launched the Sonus guitar chair
Born from a collaboration with Dream Guitars in Asheville. Custom-fitted to each player's height, silent during recording, guaranteed for life. Endorsed by Steve Vai, Colin Hay (Men at Work), and Phil Collen (Def Leppard).
Design
2010
age 51
Best in Show, Craft in America
Also Best Rocker in the South, Garden & Gun, the first sign the work was reaching an audience well beyond woodworkers.
Award
2013–2014
age 54
Regional and lifestyle press widen the circle
WNC Magazine, MODERN, Ocean Home. The Sunniva Porch Swing & Stand earns US Design Patent #D712,167, the first documented patent in this body of work.
Press
2014
age 55
Moves into the River Arts District shop
11,000 square feet. Left Biltmore Village after the city began enforcing sprinkler requirements for woodworking shops over 3,000 square feet. The old space didn't qualify. This is where the Cio Chair and many other pieces were conceived, where the team grew to its largest size, and where public tours ran daily at 3:00pm. Home for the next ten years, through 2024.
Life & place
2015
age 56
Joins the board of The Furniture Society
A wave of design and lifestyle press (Landscape Architecture Magazine, Seven Magazine, Upscale Living, Capital at Play, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) mark the work as a fixture in both craft and design conversations.
Community
2016
age 57
First international design award
Melanie enters the Sunniva Deluxe outdoor swing in the A' Design Award. It wins.
Award
2016
age 57
Grand Lily Arm Chair's first Good Design Award
What started as an experiment becomes a habit: fan-shaped curly maple back, splayed walnut legs and arms, the same year as the Sunniva win.
Award
2017
age 58
The Ask Brian Boggs Show launches
Built to answer questions from woodworkers around the country. The same year, the Sculpted Fanback Arm Chair, designed twenty years earlier, finally wins its Good Design Award, the Slab in the Dark Table takes Best of Show at the Western Design Conference, and the company is named a national FedEx Small Business Grant winner.
Teaching
Spring 2018
age 59
A New Ladderback Takes Shape
Brian told the thirty clients waiting for Boggs Berea chairs that he was developing a new ladderback design. He thought it would take three months. It took twenty four. The old chair had evolved from a storage shed, a lathe, a chisel, and not much else. The new one would build on that history while taking advantage of the technology of its own century.
Design
2018–2019
age 59
Two years of failure toward a breakthrough
Early attempts at a torsion-box seat kept failing to meet production flow requirements. Only six chairs in those two years met his own quality standard to sell. The turn came from linen, layered with epoxy and a sturdy veneer, pressed into a shape he could not understand before.
Design
2019
age 60
The Cio Chair is unveiled
Light, strong, elegant: “a unified plant in the shape of a chair.” Wins the Good Design Award the same year it launches, and Best in Show from the International Society of Furniture Designers in 2022. Carries two other quiet discoveries: a way to bend slats in two planes for better comfort, and a way to make precision compound curves on the bandsaw.
Design
March 2019
age 60
Boggs Bench webinar series launches
Starting with bandsaw technique, the real seed of what Boggs Bench is becoming: not just tips, but the why behind the how.
Online
2019–2021
age 60
A run of technical writing for Fine Woodworking
Bandsawn curves, bridle joints, bent lamination, two-part bending forms, turning two decades of shop-floor problem-solving into published teaching, alongside continued press attention (Craftsmanship Magazine, The Week, Business North Carolina, Asheville Made, Mountain Living).
Writing
2021
age 62
Cio Chair granted U.S. Design Patent
U.S. Design Patent D935,823, issued November 16, 2021.
Award
2022
age 63
Crescent Table wins Innovation + Design
Recognition for the reinvention completed a few years earlier.
Award
2022
age 63
Cio Arm Chair takes Best in Show, ISFD
The same tapered ladder-back and compound curves that made the Cio Chair light and strong, extended into an arm chair. Best in Show, International Society of Furniture Designers.
Award
July 2023
age 64
Challenging the Myth of the Self-Taught Craftsman
A talk delivered at the AWFS Fair in Las Vegas, arguing that self-taught was never a limitation: it was a method of paying close attention to what's in front of you.
Teaching
Fall 2024
age 65
Moves to the current shop on Riverside Drive
Left the River Arts District shop after ten years, right as Hurricane Helene was approaching the region.
Life & place
Fall 2024
age 65
Hurricane Helene
The French Broad River crested at 27.3 feet. Floodwater rose to within eight inches of the new shop's floor before it stopped. A marker in this record not for what was lost, but for how close it came, and what it clarified about what's worth protecting.
Life & place
2025
age 66
Returns to Berea College as artist-in-residence
Works with students in the Student Craft program's broom and wood studios as a visiting designer. A bench brush from that collaboration joins the college's catalog in fall 2025. Teaching, back at the place the chairmaking itself started.
Teaching
2026
age 67
Redesigned the Sonus and Lily line
Revisited two of the studio's signature lines, the Sonus guitar chair and the Lily line (the Grand Lily armchair among them), refining them with what's been learned since their original debut.
Design
2026
age 67
Substack: writing for makers
Launched March 15, 2026. After decades of technical writing for the trade press, Brian starts a different kind of writing on Substack, the why behind the how: essays on the philosophy of chairmaking and the nature of wood, not just the technique.
Writing
Now
age 67
Building Boggs Bench
Courses, essays, tools, and a body of ideas built up over four decades are becoming their own kind of legacy: one that doesn't depend on how many chairs get built in a year.
Online
Ongoing
age —
The chairs keep traveling
Boggs post-and-rung chairs are now built and used across North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America, carried there by former apprentices, students, and the reach of the teaching itself.
People