Comments

|

E-mail

|

Print

Every piece tells a story
By Beth Cooney
Wood intrigues Thomas Throop. So while the rough remains of a tree propped against a wall in his New Canaan studio may look like a simple two by four, to Throop it’s a story waiting to be told.
With Throop’s careful hands at the saw, the wood may one day be a cherished family heirloom with dents, scratches, watermarks and all kinds of wear and tear. Those aging imperfections will only enhance its value for Throop, who “loves to see evidence that furniture has had a life and history.”
Throop confesses to seeing handcrafted furniture as romantic, which explains why he likes to imagine every piece he carefully makes in the English Arts & Crafts style as having a rarified life story. “I’m like a proud parent who pushes a child out in the world to find its way and hopes and prays it has a good life,” he says.
Many of Throop’s Black Creek Studio designs do develop interesting personal histories: He’s made chairs for Istanbul mansions, cabinets for Ming Dynasty antiques and elegant pedestals for a Bostonian’s cherished acoustic guitar collection (a favorite recent project). “People want to respond to things,” he says. “You look at that furniture in a different way because it has a story. And that seems to be what people value when they come to me.”
Purpose and meaning embodies Throop’s conceptual pieces, which the artisan craftsman has been making in his native New Canaan for almost 20 years. In his Black Creek Designs studio, a few blocks from downtown, Throop carefully creates 15 to 20 pieces of mostly commissioned furniture a year ranging from beds and dining tables to custom resting places for collectibles.
Throop is thoughtful and modest, but his award-winning portfolio is not. He is part of the elite guilds of artists at Silvermine in New Canaan and the Brookfield Crafts Center. His work has been exhibited in museums, sold in exclusive galleries and commissioned by collectors willing to pay in the thousands to have objects made with his signature furnish their lives. Throop’s clients are diverse and far-flung, but they seem to share a bond with the artisan. “I think they value the process, the same way I do,” he says. “They like the idea that I think a lot about the piece; that I designed it and then made it with my own hand.
“I tend to interview my clients,” Throop says. “I like to know where the furniture is going and what it means to them.“ So while it pleases Throop to know that a sculpted bench he recently finished will soon sport a tony New York City address, he’s just as excited about working with an Alabama couple that saw his work on the Internet a few years ago and ordered two chairs. They were so pleased they called recently to order a custom sofa. “It is fine that people collect my things, but I really like the idea that people are using them to live their life.”
Throops’s sense of history extends to his raw materials. “I can be very intrigued and inspired by the unique texture and pattern of a piece of wood,” he says.
His patrons sometimes give him wood for their commissions and local residents familiar with his work offer him cherished trees. “I’ve had clients have a 100-year-old tree they have to have chopped down, cut and hauled to me and made into furniture,” he says.
Throop’s creative life came somewhat by accident. He studied economics (“my practical side”} and photography (“my creative side”) but soon realized, “the whole Wall Street thing just wasn’t me.” He began doing custom home renovations with his brother and found himself drawn to woodworking. His instincts were nurtured by a childhood home filled with antiques and an uncle who was a boat-builder on Long Island. “I was drawn to this romantic notion of making things, one at a time, by hand,” he says. His philosophy was so in keeping with the organically rebellious spirit of the Arts & Crafts movement that he became fascinated by it. “There was this rejection of the whole Industrial Revolution; they felt the soul was sort of stripped out of things if they weren’t made by hand.”
Throop so responded to the movement’s do-it-by-hand spirit that he relocated to England for three years to study and apprentice with John Makepeace, considered the master of its traditions. When his studies were complete, he returned to Fairfield County. His business grew mostly by word of mouth, although referrals from interior designers and fellow artists helped him prosper.
In his quiet studio, which naturally smells of sawdust and wood varnish, Throop lifts a blanket on a highly polished bench that is off to share an Upper East Side home with a collection of rare Ming Dynasty antiques. Then Throop shares the beginnings of the Alabama sofa. He’s been working on the sculpted chair legs for days; a difficult task he says may take days more to complete. In another part of his studio is a cabinet that will serve as a pedestal for a miniature, antique Blacksmith shop. Its owner came to Throop with the commission, sensing he would appreciate the sentiment of the family heirloom. Throop was so intrigued by the project (“It’s so cool, everything in there really works”) that he began to experiment with copper, making inlaid panels for the cabinet. The metal work was taking days to prepare. “But that’s kind of the idea,” he says. “It’s not something that’s supposed to happen overnight.”
The artisan, who makes all his drawer pulls by hand, was recently awarded a state grant to begin working with brass. “I have a style, but I like to change and grow and learn new things,” he says of his flirtation with brass. “Experimenting with metals is just a natural part of that process.’
While Throop has a few of his own pieces, he collects Stickley furniture, which boasts the organic lines that distinguish his own pieces. “Like so many artists, mine come last,” he says with a laugh, explaining the furnishings in his Rowayton home are mostly store-bought mixed in with antiques and Throop originals. “I did my dining room table and we use it a lot, so I suppose that’s kind of meaningful to me.” Another Throop piece with some personal history. @