Coastal craft. Nestled on a wooded property in Midcoast Maine, the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship has become a magnet for outstanding makers and teachers, and a robust community has developed around it.

If you were an aspiring furniture maker in 1995 and you found yourself in Rockport, Maine, where Mill Street meets Route 90, you would have arrived at a nice place for a walk, with some fields, some forest, and the Oyster River nearby. Visit the spot 30 years later and you find, in a companionable cluster of red buildings, one of the best places on the planet to learn the craft.

The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship (CFC), founded in 1993 by Peter Korn in a small backyard barn in nearby Rockland and launched with a handful of weeklong workshops taught by him, now offers a nine-month comprehensive course designed for the professional or aspiring professional maker; 12-week intensive courses in woodworking and turning; and a wide range of one- and two-week workshops taught by some of the world’s most distinguished woodworkers.

Fine teaching is the backbone of CFC. Its teachers are highly accomplished designers and makers themselves, but even the best among them aren’t hired back if they don’t teach well. The pedagogical bar set at the nine-month comprehensive course is exceptionally high; it has been led for five years by Australian David Upfill-Brown, for 11 by Welshman Aled Lewis, and for five by Tim Rousseau, exceptional teachers all.

CFC also supports a program of fellowships offering free shop space to emerging makers and a residency program for established makers, who are encouraged to do work that explores new directions and techniques.

Students who are in the nine-month program can also look forward to seeing their work exhibited in CFC’s Messler Gallery, which mounts half a dozen shows each year.

A high bar. The experience at CFC embraces techniques from the most fundamental to the most challenging. Below are work here by a few CFC teachers: Aled Lewis with his settle, Tim Rousseau’s writing desk, David Haig’s signature rocker, and Yuri Kobayashi’s sculpture Believing.

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