Matt Cooper
I build modern and Japanese-influenced furniture from locally-milled hardwoods. The shop is alongside a creek, shaded by a huge walnut tree here in the middle of the hamlet of West Danby.
CONTACT INFORMATION
- phone:
- studio: 607-330-5700
- e-mail:
- matt@mcfdesign.com
- website:
- www.mcfdesign.com
ADDRESS
Matt Cooper Furniture Design, 7 Valley View Road, West Danby, NY 14883STUDIO DIRECTIONS
DirectionsHead south out of Ithaca on Route 34. About six miles past Eddydale’s Farm Market, you’ll come up a little rise and see a big wooden ‘Welcome to West Danby’ sign on your right. About half a mile further, you’ll take a right onto Valley View (Maple Avenue). Bear right as you make the turn and park in the first driveway on the left, alongside a stucco house with brown trim, house number 7. The studio is in the building behind the house.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I came to making furniture via a circuitous route. I studied art in college, at the University of California at Santa Cruz, emphasizing photography. After graduating and returning home to Portland, Oregon, I spent a few years working in the world of commercial photography but ultimately got fed up with excessive labor in aid of a transient product. My reaction to that was to become
a carpenter; reasonable labor to produce a more permanent result. Rough and unskilled work led to finer and more exacting work, and renting a shop space with a friend naturally then led me to finer work still, i.e. furniture.
I soon gave up the site work, leased a larger shop space, and began doing custom furniture work for a range of clients. Concurrent to that I spent two years in the Mastery Program at the Northwest Woodworking Studio, studying with Gary Rogowski and perfecting my craft.
In 2003, my wife and I decided to move to the East Coast, and lucked out in finding ourselves in the small hamlet of West Danby, here in New York. We built an 1800 square foot shop here for me to use to resume making furniture. My work now is a mixture of both commissions and speculative pieces, but all in the same
modern and Asian style that characterizes my design sense.
