Dorset, VT
If it wasn't for an "epiphany" in 1975, Steve Holman might be selling cars instead of making incredible furniture. Holman's family in New Jersey was in the car business, and fully expected Steve to take over the business. As a sophomore economics major at a North Carolina college, however, Steve realized that he wasn't happy with his prospective future.
"Suddenly the whole thought of it became unappealing to me," he says. "It occurred to me that maybe there were other things."
After his junior year, Holman took a job for a year building houses for the poor in Florida, Colorado and California. There he learned basic carpentry skills, and found a love for working with his hands.
"But it became apparent to me that I wanted to do work that was finer than what I was doing," he remembers.
So then Steve found another job, this time building wooden boats on Buzzard's Bay, Cape Cod.
While Steve was pursuing his own personal artistic muse, his family was somewhat frustrated that he didn't want to work in the car business.
"I think they thought I was kind of nuts," Steve says, smiling.
"Maybe they were bemused. They didn't have much of an understanding of why anyone would want to do this."
Like many recent grads, Steve was rootless. He decided two things: he wanted to be in the Bay Area of San Francisco, and he wanted to be an apprentice to a furniture maker.
So he went the direct route.
"I probably went to 45 shops, door to door to door," he says.
Finally, Steve found work at a shop in Oakland, where the California "roundover" style was in vogue.
This was a shop where power routers were king, and hand tools were covered in inches of sawdust.
"I was into hand tools," Steve recalls. "I thought that was the purest way of making things. So in some ways I was appalled at those methods."
Nevertheless, Steve did pick up more woodworking skills that he would need for his next job. By this time, Steve was missing his family and the East coast. When he heard about a Buddhist in Southern Vermont who was looking for help building post and beam houses, he jumped at the chance. The job only lasted six months, but Steve has been in the area ever since. In 1981, he began the process of setting up his own shop in Manchester. He remembers his early pieces as being crude, and his mindset as naive.
"I was so stupid I didn't know I was stupid," he laughs.
By 1985, Steve was thinking more in terms of a piece's unity and design. In that year, he built an armoire that he calls his "first really good piece." Today, he makes furniture that is more than "really good." Steve Holman's contemporary designs and highly-finished attention to detail has earned him a spot as one of New England's most accomplished furniture makers. He makes beds, chairs, tables,armoires, chests of drawers and just about anything his customers request. About 95 percent of his work is commissioned, the most outlandish being a 30-foot long golf club installed next to a giant fireplace chimney.
Although his demeanor in person is straightforward, his sense of humor comes out in his personal projects: bright red "Valentine" chairs in the shape of hearts, flaming croquet mallets, a chair called "They Eyes Have It" featuring an Egyptian eye at the top of a pyramid, and a table with a built-in bottle of mustard dripping over the edge.
"Most things like that people have a hard time living with," he says. "But I could live with it."
Although Steve has developed relationships with a few wealthy patrons in Vermont, he finds that more traditional tastes in his home state preclude him from selling more work here. Instead, his contemporary work is featured in galleries in places like Boston, Chicago and New Orleans.
"When you see a Steve Holman piece, it's clearly a Steve Holman piece," says William LaBerge, a furniture maker from Wells. "It's what we should all be striving for."
LaBerge says that while some people specialize in strong design and others shine with excellent technical work, Holman excels in both areas. "Even his most outrageous pieces are really well-made furniture."
In speaking about his work, Steve is generally humble about his talents. But that doesn't mean he sees toiling in obscurity as romantic.
"I'd like to be famous... I think," he says. "I could deal with making pieces for Steven Spielberg and having articles in the New York Times about me. That would be kind of nice."
CraftWise is a joint educational project of the Vermont Crafts
Council and the Frog Hollow Vermont State Craft Centers. For more information about Steve Holman's work, call
Frog Hollow at
(802) 388-3177.
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