This article is part of the Design Special Section on Respect for Handmade Objects.
Often it starts with the box. These practical objects are representations of the technical rigor and style of woodworking. But for Wendy Maruyama, who earned a Masters degree in furniture design from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1980, the box was also a political statement. Early in her career, she perched on a four-foot-high stand with a box covered in vibrant colors and spiked handles on the lid. Auction sites often describe these pieces as “humble boxes,” but started out with specific uses to hold 18 packs of tampons.
“I loved the idea of gender-specific furniture, making things that men can't grasp or experience,” Maruyama, 73, said in an email interview recently. One of the few women in the American Studio Furniture Movement, one of the cohorts that combines fantastic woodworking skills and artistic expression, she has built a larger version that holds menstrual pads and adult toys.
Last year, the Fresno Museum handed Maruyama the renowned female artist award and held her first career research. Before her, the furniture maker was not honored, which went to formerly sculptor Ruth Asawa, congregation artists Betty Searle and Weaver Kay Sekimachi. In November, the Manhattan Gallery Superhouse exhibited her Prism Tambourg Cabinet at Colorama, a show that also includes furniture from her friend and fellow woodworker Tom Rother.
Maruyama doesn't just step into the gender-specific spotlight. Woodworking, which has long been a male-dominated field, has become more interesting as the boundaries between craft and high art are lifted and women in both regions enjoy new waves of gratitude. It is filled with visually bold form, with the story's content, social commentary, and the favors of female makers. Passbreakers of the American studio furniture movement, now in the 70s and 80s, are still creating new jobs, but the younger generations of women who have learned from them continue to advance the medium.
“For many years, women are much more likely to be woodworkers, furniture makers, or designers,” he said in 1995, co-founded the Furniture Design division of the Rhode Island School of Design, and later became the facility's president. “In every generation, interests change. My generation had more pedigrees from high-level ornamental art, but women now bring more narrative interest and identity issues. It's not about the highest level of craft, but the highest level of representation, and is almost provocative.”
This material has so many cultural and ecological associations that it is suitable for tackling modern issues. Houston furniture maker Joyce Lynn, 30, created her conceptual domestic objects for her “material autopsy” to explore the influence of our industrialized society and how most of us are excluded from the way things are made. For one chair in the series, it appears to have grown from a single log open to reveal the ring.
“I'll post pictures of my work online, Lin said.
For 35-year-old Kim Mpangirai, a Belgian Congo interior designer in Brooklyn, New York, Wood was a natural choice for her first furniture collection, featured in 2023. Her utilitarian objects roughly refer to archival photographs taken in Central Africa and are made from materials common in Congolese crafts such as teak, banana fiber and rattan. Her Mwasi Armoire is an hourglass-shaped piece with woven doors and is currently on display at the Cooper Hewitt Museum at the “Making Home – Smithsonian Design Triennial” and recently exhibiting Art Nouveau and Belgian colonial history at the Fog Design + Art Fair in San Francisco.
Deirdre Visser, a San Francisco curator and woodworker, said that talking more directly about the role of gender in this field is important to welcome new perspectives and create more exciting objects.
Her commentary takes the form of a recent book called Joinal, Joists and Kender: A History of Woodworking of The 21 Century. From medieval Turners to Shakers who developed the first circular saw, women and gender misfits feature contemporary artists like Katie Hadnal, who heads the woodworking and furniture program at the University of Wisconsin Madison University, and Yuri Kobayashi, who studied Maryyama designs at the University of San Diego. (Mr. Lin was one of her students.)
Visser, 54, rejects the concept of being classified as a female woodworker rather than someone who works in wood. “We all have the identity that we bring to create, and that's where the debate is ingrained,” she said. “The most cisgender straight white men bring their identity and a string of experience to wooden shops, so their identity as a manufacturer is stupid.”
British designer Faye Torgood is more in line with the way her identity shapes what she has created. She used wood for her early works, but soon moved to industrial materials. “I looked left and right and thought if I wanted to take it seriously, I needed to pick up bronze and steel,” she said. “I realize now that it's because I feel quirky in the field of industrial design, dominated by men.”
Recently, Toogood, 48, returned to wood with “Assemblage 7: Lost and Found II.” “The piece has become really modern, but at the same time I felt very old,” she said.
With all the leap, woodworking could still be welcomed and isolated for women, with some manufacturers bent on building community and support.
Natalie Shock, 42, is one of them, a Brooklyn artist and self-taught woodworker. After her products grew from stools to massive modular shelving, she opened her own workshop. This allowed her to “completely isolated” herself from the hostility she experienced at other stores, she said. “There's no energy or assumption that women can't do things in our studio.”
Alexis Tingey and Ginger Gordon founded woodworking studio Alexis & Ginger in 2023, a year after graduating from RISD. At school, they “were able to focus on importance and do our best to explore and clarify our ideas,” said the 34-year-old. “And since then, it's not always the case.” Sometimes they are the only women in workshops. “But at least we have each other,” she added.
Katie Thompson, 38, a rural South Carolina artist, started a blog and Instagram account called Women of Woodworking in 2015, connecting with other manufacturers. “At the time I felt quite isolated as a female woodworker and wanted to amplify the stories of other women and gender-incompatible woodworking, so more people could see themselves as part of the field,” she said. The community has grown to thousands of members around the world, hosting interviews on Instagram Live and Virtual Meet-Up.
Practitioners hope this momentum continues. “As much as I would like to believe that the next few years will bring more progress to women in these fields, the political situation doesn't give me much hope,” Maruyama said. “But I want to be wrong. I was pleasantly surprised before.”
