EAST MISSOULA - Andrew Maisel never knew his great-grandfather, and Frederick Maisel never knew Montana.But it's as if the two work side by side - or wall by workbench - in Andrew's shop on Speedway Avenue.
He keeps 13 of his ancestor's molding planes on a shelf, each stamped with the initials "F.M." If not his guiding lights, the century-old tools are reminders of where Maisel's love for the ways of wood comes from.
"The lineage of the family has been carpenters and builders ever since," the 36-year-old Andrew said.
It was he who brought it to Montana, bagging English courses at the University of Maryland 15 years ago when he got the first taste of Big Sky Country on a cross-country adventure.
Until four years ago, Maisel worked for area cabinet shops before striking out on his own, forming Mission Mountain Joinery.
Now, for the most part, he can focus on what he calls his true love in the craft: designing and producing furniture with an accent on the traditional American.
You don't have to be a connoisseur to see that the guy's good.
Just flip open the April edition of "Fine Woodworking," the top-end magazine of the trade. Inside you'll find such feature stories as "8 Tips for Flawless Moldings" and "Bring Out the Best in Mahogany."On page 85, in the Readers Gallery section, is a photo of not Maisel but the crown jewel of his career so far: a Shaker cupboard, 8 1/2 feet tall and
5 1/2 feet wide, made of birch and poplar inside and an exterior of solid cherry wood.
Maisel finished the masterpiece a year ago for a home in Grant Creek, where it now occupies most of a wall in an upstairs bedroom.
It represents Maisel's first submittal to "Fine Woodworking."
Publicist Brian Erni said in a release that the 30-year-old magazine "is widely considered to be the world's leading woodworking publication, having featured the work of legendary craftsmen such as Tage Frid, Hank Gilpin and - perhaps the world's most famous woodworker - U.S. President Jimmy Carter."
Erni said hundreds of submissions are sent to "Fine Woodworking" each month and only a few are accepted. Maisel's Shaker cupboard is one of 13 in the Readers Gallery of the April issue, which is currently making way for the May edition on newsstands.You won't find another made-in-Montana cupboard like this, Maisel said.
Its style is that of the Shakers, of "'Tis the gift to be simple" fame - spare, durable, functional.
The religious group, which in the U.S. is based in New England, reached its heyday about the time the first Frederick Maisel hit the shore in Maryland.
Hands to work, hearts to God, the Shakers preach.
And: Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live, and as though you were going to die tomorrow.
Time is a dilemma for modern-day furniture makers. Maisel is just finishing one project, after which he has lined up a nursing rocker, a desk, a blanket chest, a sideboard and a few small built-in pieces.That's probably a six- or eight-month window of work, which is fine with him.
"I typically work on one piece at a time. Otherwise it's just too distracting," he said. "I really like to give my complete attention in one direction. Too many details become obscure when I try to jump from piece to piece."
Maisel's Shaker cupboard is unique because it's authentic throughout, he said. The dovetail joints are all hand cut, a craft in itself - a snug fit requires a highly accurate cut.
The piece is solid wood, including ebonized cherry pulls on the 18 drawers at the bottom. Each line of drawers is made from the same board, making a fetching horizontal presentation. The same's true, in vertical form, for the door fronts above.
Maisel pulled out a number of drawers from the cupboard, each of which conforms to a slightly different opening. He pointed to the grain in the wood of a drawer bottom, evidence that it wasn't the more standard plywood. The grain is oriented, he explained, so the wood expands and contracts out the back and front, not from side to side.
"It's the type of attention to detail that enables it to become endless in its visual exploration," he said.
The work was a collaboration with the woman who commissioned the piece, Maisel said.
"She knew she wanted something very tall and grand. She has essentially a cathedral ceiling in the room and she wanted something to really emphasize and take advantage of that," he said.
She had in mind the image of a cupboard she'd seen years before in a design book. She also liked the "symmetry and visual play" of an apothecary layout of drawers, resembling the traditional medicine cabinet.
In a book of traditional American furniture, said Maisel, "we looked at a lot of these tall traditional cupboards and through a process of maybe six drawings we got to one we both felt very good about and were able to proceed with."
"Yeah, I spend days in the shop," he said. "But that's simply a means to manifest the creative process. What I really enjoy the most is sitting and talking with clients, and drawing and going through images, and working all that out."
Another Andrew Maisel, a cousin of one of the Fredericks, immigrated to the U.S. in the 1880s. He helped build the town of Catonsville, Md., just west of Baltimore, where young Andrew grew up a century later.When he was still in high school he worked for a cabinetmaker named Neil Schlag.
Schlag remains the finest cabinetmaker he's ever been around, said Maisel. "It was really like the role of a traditional apprentice."
Schlag's forte was "very exact antique reproductions," including one based on a piece from the Baltimore Museum of Art they had in the shop.
"All handjoinery. It was the real thing," said Maisel. "So when it's referred to as museum quality for authenticity, it essentially is. That is where I learned, where my personal study began, with this attraction to antique reproductions and the traditional joinery methods."
He recalled the weekends he spent as a teenager going antiquing, traveling to shops and museums in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware - "any historic location that I could. Williamsburg, Va., was a frequent vacation spot for me to go and spend the day in the cabinet shop and the museums."
Maisel is always on the lookout for someone with that same passion for the art of creating traditional furniture.
"If I were to find that individual who has that appreciation, which is more important than the mechanical skills, then I could begin to really share my work and what I'm doing with others," he said.
Maisel doesn't advertise and doesn't consider himself a rival to other furniture makers.
"I try to be noncompetitive in our community. I'm trying to promote arts and crafts," he said. "I'm trying to promote other people who are doing the same exact thing, because we're all up against the same thing where we're trying to do an arts and crafts product that is far more valuable but takes more time.
"I like to think that everything I create, and the arts and crafts people in our community create, its value is going to increase in time. It will always have this integrity about it that something that was mass produced does not."
Maisel looked at his Shaker cupboard towering above him.
Much like his great-grandfather's molding planes on the wall of his workshop, it represented something more than a prized piece of furniture.
"What's inherent in this piece is the lineage of my family that I can offer in this day and time," he said.
And one day, long after he and the house he stood in are gone, the solid wood cupboard he made in the early 21st century will remain.
It was made that way.
Reach reporter Kim Briggeman at (406) 523-5266 or by e-mail at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
Reach photographer Tom Bauer at (406) 523-5270 or at tbauer@missoulian.com.
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