Resident Mastery – Local Mastery – Distance Mastery

The Tradition of Woodworking

The woodworking tradition in the Pacific Northwest lives today at The Northwest Woodworking Studio. Encouraged and enlightened by the legacy and values of the Arts and Crafts movement, the Studio offers the best in hands-on experience for woodworkers of all skill levels. The Northwest Woodworking Studio offers a unique environment rich with the texture of history and accomplishment. The studio offers a break from the kind of demanding jobs where people work without really seeing the fruits of their labor.

Transform your woodworking and transform your life by becoming a part of the Mastery Program. In a world certifiably loud and brash, working at the bench with tools and wood provides a quiet satisfaction and solace. Here the work at the bench becomes your focus. Your project becomes the center of your attention. Each day is another step towards building a piece of furniture that will last lifetimes. When you work at the bench with hand tools, time melts away. Whether you’re a lifelong practitioner or just learning, these woodworking skills are magical and transform us at the bench.

Students love solving problems: tackling an issue head on, figuring it out and conquering it. This kind of satisfaction makes woodworkers what they are. They also love to be at the bench, quietly in their own place and space. Finally, they like to share all this with others in an atmosphere of camaraderie – each student working through the same struggles, the same difficulties. You’re not alone in this pursuit. There is much to learn, and where others have succeeded so, too, can you.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What draws us to this work? For most students it’s a love of tools, the way a well-worn handle feels in the hand, the heft of a good hand plane taking off whisper-thin shavings, the thwack of a mallet and cut of a sharp chisel. This is the stuff that transforms an ordinary space into a woodworking shop and an ordinary person into a craftsman. These are the things you’ll find at the Northwest Woodworking Studio.

Transform your own woodworking by becoming a part of the Mastery Tradition. Our Mastery Programs will teach you classic furniture making techniques while helping you develop your own signature design style. Learn to build furniture of the highest quality in a program designed to suit your own specific needs.

Residency at the Studio

The Resident Mastery Program offers an intensive nine month course of study in fine furniture making. Up to four Resident students a year are given bench space in the Studio studying the techniques of hand and power tool use, joinery, fine cabinet construction, finishing, and design.

The course of study lasts for nine months starting in October. Students will be able to work in the Studio Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Students will spend each week at the bench designing and building both Design and Studio Projects.

Design Projects have been chosen to teach certain methods, techniques, and approaches while at the same time allowing each student room to explore his or her own style. Studio projects have been selected to illustrate techniques while building useful and practical objects. These include items such as jigs and hand tools, tool boxes and shop storage drawers as well as some smaller shop items like sawhorses and stools.

With an emphasis on furniture design, students will emerge from the program with a sense of how to design fine furniture. They will develop a signature style of their own while building pieces with the goal of producing gallery quality. The practical aspects of the program however cannot be overlooked as students will learn effective machine use and maintenance, production building, and shop set-up.

Two Year Program

The Mastery Program offers intensive study in furniture making for students with their own shops in Portland, Oregon. This one-on-one study program focuses on design, joinery, and building skills. Students will design and construct a total of 10 pieces during their education as well as meeting weekly at the Studio for a series of lectures, demonstrations, and critiques. This program runs for two years with three terms: Fall, Winter, and Spring. The goal is to teach people how to design and build furniture of the highest quality.

Building these pieces will give each student a firm grounding in the basics of hand and power tool joinery, carcase construction and frame and panel work. Year one emphasis will be on hand tool skills, router use, carving, and basic construction and joinery skills. Year two will focus on furniture design, effective machine use & maintenance, carving, inlay, bentwood construction, and fine cabinetry including drawer work. Students will develop a signature style of their own while building pieces with the goal of producing gallery quality work.

Distance Learning

The Distance Mastery Program is designed for self-directed and motivated students who reside outside the region or cannot make the weekly meeting. The goal is to teach people how to design and build furniture of the highest quality.

Entry for the Distance Mastery Program is during the Spring and Fall terms only. Each year starts with a four day seminar in late summer / early autumn for Fall term and early spring for Spring term. Distance students meet for seven seminars and weekend concentrations over the course of two years. There is also on-line or telephone time with Gary Rogowski scheduled throughout the term during which projects, designs, techniques, and general concerns are discussed.

Students will design and build a total of 10 pieces over the two year period. Students will develop a signature style of their own while building pieces with the goal of producing gallery quality work after two years. Projects have been chosen to teach certain methods, techniques, and approaches while at the same time allowing each student room to explore his or her own style.

Workshops and Lectures supplement our Mastery Courses and provide an ideal way to broaden your horizons by learning from some of the best guest instructors in the world. These workshops and lectures are open to anybody looking to master any of the myriad subjects featured in these convenient classes. 

“Things men have made with wakened hands
And put soft life into
Are awake through years with transferred touch,
And go on glowing
For long years
And for this reason, some old things are lovely
Warm still with the life of forgotten men
Who made them.”

-D.H. Lawrence

We urge students interested in our Mastery Programs to come and take a week long class with us. The Joinery Concentrations are a perfect introduction to the Studio, working with Gary, the travel issues you may face, and the effort required to be a Mastery student.

Please check our schedule of classes for the next Joinery Concentration.