Brief History of the NH Furniture Master Association

To say that the NH Furniture Masters Association has been successful since its inaugural exhibition would be an understatement. To say that the origins of this unique and visionary approach to marketing our work came from a non-woodworker would be stating the obvious.

In the summer of 1994 six woodworkers were invited to a lunch meeting by Tony Hartigan, Vice President of Merrill Lynch in Concord, NH. During this first meeting Tony shared his vision of marketing one of New Hampshire's natural resources, its furniture makers. We had been aware that New Hampshire, while one of the smallest states in the union, has an inordinate number of very talented woodworkers, but as craftspeople we had no idea how successful pooling these resources would be.

Tony, having recently attended a symposium on global economics, began to realize that furniture is a multi-billion dollar industry and here in NH one of our greatest natural resources was untapped and unorganized. We discussed the fact that while all six of us at this meeting had achieved a measure of success and recognition, we relied on shows and galleries outside of NH to market our work. Tony's greater vision was to let the quality of our work bring buyers to NH, instead of taking our work out of state. Very early on the NH Historical Society's executive director John Frisby was invited to participate in our monthly meetings and thus began a collaboration between the newly formed and named NH Furniture Masters Association and the NH Historical Society. With Tony Hartigan as our visionary and public relations guru and the Historical Society lending its weight, prestige and physical facilities, we decided to put on a gala inaugural exhibition. This was to be an exhibit with a difference.

Each exhibition piece would have a patron. This would enable the craftsperson to have the cost of the exhibit piece underwritten and be guaranteed at least one commission. However, the unique aspect of this inaugural event was that at the end of the exhibition each piece of furniture would be auctioned off. If the price at the auction was greater than the original patron price, the high bidder would get the piece at the higher hammer price and the craftsperson would build a replacement piece for the original patron at the original patron price. This had never been done before. We had no model that we could study to see if it would be successful or not. It was an innovative marketing idea that would generate a lot of publicity, but would it work?

At this time we realized that we needed to expand our ranks from the original six people to bring diversity and to ensure that we would have enough furniture for a high quality exhibition. Other craftspeople were invited to submit their work for jury. There were specific criteria: they had to be working in New Hampshire, they had to have established a track record of professional exhibiting of their work, and the quality of their work had to be exemplary. Using these guidelines, our numbers grew to thirteen members. This first exhibit and auction was held in June of 1996 and was a tremendous success. Since that time we have doubled again to 26 members. We now hold an annual exhibition and auction and emphasize the patron/craftsperson relationship.

We have far exceeded our original goals, but our plans and aspirations have also grown with our success. Since a lot of the magazine, newspaper and television coverage we have received has been on a national level, we plan to take the show on the road. To date we have shown our work in Boston, Greenwich, CT, Providence, RI, New York City and next year plan an exhibit in Washington, DC. We as a group of craftspeople are greatly indebted to the many advisory board members who have spearheaded the group's direction. We realize that we could not have achieved what we have without their dedication and help.

Terry Moore, President NHFMA 1998