Michael Fortune

Michael Fortune is a professional woodworker in Canada, about 100 miles from Toronto. He works in a large shop on his wooded property, cutting most of his own wood with his portable sawmill. He is a specialist in the art of bending wood and working with curves011240050_bent-lamination-main and is well known for his large number of bandsaws.

He got started in woodworking when he was very young. His parents bought him tools for birthdays and Christmas when he was as young as 5 or 6. His passion for woodworking was well established. He went to college to study graphic design at Sheridan College and accidentally ran into the head of the furniture design program while running an errand on campus. seagulltableThat man showed him the shop and the program, and Fortune switched majors immediately, without looking back. After school, there was a little difficulty getting started. Fortune’s practical skills were not as refined as his design ones were, so he had to work hard and practice to build them up and become a great furniture designer and maker.

After school ended, he went looking for some practical experience and found it in the shop of a man named Alan Peters. fortune-tablePeters showed him how to make an entire project his own rather than let it be controlled by a client. Like me, Fortune picked up much of his woodworking knowledge from Fine Woodworking Magazine, which at the time had just been created. Today he frequently writes for the magazine, helping to teach young woodworkers like me. He also pay the favor of Alan Peters forward by hosting interns in his shop so that they can gain experience in designing and building. Fortune still remains in control of what he builds. He takes an need and very basic requirements from a client, prepares two drawings, and the client can pick one or the other, nothing else. It took time to gain this confidence, but it has worked out very well. The clients are willing to trust him, and he does things this way because he is the one trained in design and construction, not the client. He knows what will work and what won’t. And he knows how to make something beautiful. Fortune’s work is modern but doesn’t have the hard lines found in much modern furniture as a result of factory production. He loves to work with curves and bends. His design process is very iterative, he uses drawings and multiple scale models before doing any real woodwork.

Fortune also does a lot of teaching, traveling all over the United States and the world. He enjoys this and sees it as necessary because he has built up so much knowledge that it would be wrong to not share it with the many open minds which wish to learn. comfy_chair_mfIn addition to helping paying clients who woodwork as a hobby, he has spent time helping underprivileged people in developing countries, teaching how to design, woodwork, and market their furniture and products to be commercially successful.

Fortune is a furniture maker because he can work as he wants, and it is exactly what he wants to do. He, again like me, spoke with as many furniture makers as he could when he was starting, and found that the most common attribute was a commitment. This was true no matter their style or anything else.

 

4 thoughts on “Michael Fortune”

  1. I’ve noticed that many of these woodworkers have studied graphic design in college. Do you know if this major or a different one is the most popular major among woodworkers?

  2. Wow, I think those are my favorite works yet. Thank you for bring this guy’s work up. Have you ever attempted of this sort of design?

  3. Wow his pieces are awesome! They are so fun and complex I really like how he distinguishes himself from the modern mass produced furniture with his avoidance of harsh corners and lines.

  4. I love those pieces of his that you included in this post. I like how they are different from the average furniture pieces that you commonly see.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *