American Manufacturing in a Backyard

In the fall of 2015, I was hired to strip furniture and put the easy pieces back together again for a small shop that sold upcycled goods in North Oakland. I worked outside, on the back patio of a woman’s house. I remember it being sunny and warm, being fit as hell (the 8 mile bike ride helped), and being crazy nostalgic for a different era of American manufacturing.

Serendipitously, the book, “Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local – and Helped Save an American Town,” was released just a few months earlier. It was a mesmerizing story that, growing up on the west coast, had never been on my radar. I carried the struggles and triumphs of the American furniture industry with me to work every day. I quickly realized that older pieces had soul, a terroir—I couldn’t wait to jump in; the newer ones were full of synthetics that off-gas–I couldn’t wait to get out. I fell in love with well-made furniture not for its outward beauty, but for its guts. I loved being on the inside, my hands deep in the bowels of rough burlap, broken twine, matted cotton, and steel springs; places not visited by another human hand for a generation. Part hunter, part farmer, part butcher, I was there to lay an old life to rest, while priming it for consumption by another.

This unique gig only lasted a few memorable months, until my boss, the forewoman and creative director, went into labor. Like many things from that era, the shop is long gone and my boss has moved on. But what I remember most from that time is pride.

History was powering the future in that Oakland backyard. Piece by beautifully-crafted reupholstered piece, new links were added to the long chain of American craftsmanship. Despite being light years away in distance and time from the storied factories of the Southeast, I loved that my efforts were continuing the fight for craftsmanship, environmental stewardship, a living wage, and respect.