Barber brothers banking on quality, not quantity
BY LAURA RASKIN

INDEPENDENT ARTS WRITER


The Barber brothers do not have visions of

Nate, left, and Beau Barber are island natives with a two-year-old custom furniture business. They design and make all of their pieces by hand with exotic woods. LAURA RASKIN/The Independent

grandeur.

They know that the life of a custom furniture maker is a measured and methodical one, with no promise of a living wage, no matter the heart, design or detailed craftsmanship from which their work takes shape.

That is okay with them.

“We’ll never get paid,” said Nate Barber, 24.

“If we build the highest quality we can, we can charge what we want. We will build one at a time and try to stay small. It’s a good life, but it’s not a profitable one,” added Beau Barber, 26, Nate’s older brother.

The two native Nantucket sons debuted their work at the Nantucket Folk Art and Artisan Show’s “Event Under the Tent,” a fundraiser for the Small Friends of Nantucket that took place on Friday and Saturday on Nobadeer Farm Road.

Sponsored by Nantucket Looms, the annual event brings together over 50 nationally and locally recognized folk artists and craftsmen. Admission proceeds and tickets to the preview party benefit the Small Friends, a 17-year-old preschool program on the island.

Barber Furniture has been taking orders for two years from their shop in Shimmo, but this juried show was the first the brothers had done.

“The exposure is what you’re paying for,” said Nate. “An ad in a magazine costs the same price. And here (customers) get to see and touch our stuff.”

The brothers were setting up their booth on Thursday with spec pieces that showcase the work in which they take the most pride: hand tooling and veneers, exotic wood and 17th and 18th century design.

“This is custom-only furniture, not production style,” said Beau.

The brothers trek to warehouses and forests all over the United States to harvest the exotic wood they want.

“We go back in the woods with a chainsaw and drag it out,” said Nate. One of their chests – a piece that straddles the William and Mary and Chippendale styles – was made with cherry burl, a rarely utilized wood that the Barbers’ grandfather cut down himself. Beau lugged it with him to the Masterpiece School of Furniture in Fort Bragg, Ca.

It was there that Beau studied under Scotsman James Bowie to learn to build traditional and ornate styles of handcrafted furniture.

Every detail of the cherry burl chest, from the painstaking veneer to the dovetails and handscraped planes, was deliberate, and took months, said Beau.

Another spec piece, a dining table, is a combination of English and black walnut, called Claro, which results from grafting English walnut branches to Claro trees and comes from the Claro Valley in California. The grafting leaves its traces and imperfections in the rich wood.

Also on display at the show were bowls made from burls — tumor-like growths on trees that Nate caverns into hollowed-out geodes.

The medium is not foreign to the brothers, having grown up pounding nails since the ages of 12 and 14 with their father, Mark Barber, a housebuilder on the island

“We were always just making stuff,” said Nate.

“We were always around great woodworkers on the island, even as young kids,” said Beau, mentioning that his father worked for the boat builder Sanford. Both brothers graduated from Boston University after Nantucket High School. Nate majored in finance and takes care of the business side of the venture.

The von Pechmann house on Surfside Road might as well be a Barber Furniture spec house – the brothers built Fred and Janet von Pechmann’s beds, dining room table, customized wall kitchen cabinets, built-in bureau, entertainment center and mantle and their father built the addition.

“Everything is hand done, it’s all gorgeous,” said Janet, who came to not only respect the Barbers’ work, but enjoyed tripping over them in her home for a year. “They’re perfectionists, that’s why their work is slow. They are more perfectionists than I am. And they are very proud of their work, which to me is key.”

Beau said his training in California was crucial to the craftsmanship he is able to accomplish, but the Dutch and oriental-infused styles have their limits.

“I’m going to break from those traditional methods.

This is the stuff that sells right now,” he said, adding that the two men build cabinets to help sustain their business and a life on the island.

“We get along. We have a lot of fun every day,” said Nate.

I