Peter Follansbee, joiner's notes

I have a few carved works for sale – poor timing on my part, seems like every woodworker in America spent all their money in Iowa this past weekend. Two boxes and a carved panel. I’ll start with the small box.

Email me if you have questions or would like to purchase any of these – PeterFollansbee7@gmail.com

SMALL CARVED BOX
H:6 1/2″ W: 14 1/8″ D: 8 3/4″
$1,000 includes shipping in US.

small carved box, August 2026

Many years ago I saw a small box attributed to Thomas Dennis of Ipswich. After recording its features and dimensions, I took to making these little boxes when I had small, leftover bits of riven oak. Later I found published examples of a few more small boxes made in his shop, so it was not a one-off thing. Nor is it in my shop.

Complete with a till inside:

lidded till inside

Mine differs from the period examples in a couple of ways. Glued & pegged rabbet joints rather than nailed. Wooden hinges instead of iron ones used on the period boxes. But all handmade, riven red oak for the box, white pine lid and bottom. I carve the ends/sides as well as the front – the period boxes are blank on the ends.

end carving and wooden hinge in this view

CARVED BOX
H: 9″ W: 23″ D: 13 3/4″
$1,500 plus shipping in US

red oak & white pine carved box, August 2026

This one is a more typical sized box for period work. The front pattern is loosely based on an English box I had seen in a photo years ago. The side carvings are lunettes also based on English work. Red oak box, white pine lid & bottom. Like most of my boxes, glued & pegged rabbet joints, wooden cleat & pintle hinges. Bottom nailed on with handmade iron nails. Lidded till inside.

lidded till propping box lid open

Linseed oil finish. Single-board pine lid has molded edges and gouge-chopped ends. Completed with punched decoration.

intersecting lunettes on ends

Last one for now:

CARVED DEVON/IPSWICH-STYLE PANEL
H:15 3/4″ W: 13″ D: 5/8″
$775 including shipping in US.

Devon-style panel, Sept 2026

I had a wide piece of quartersawn oak that was just stunning. Just over 13″ wide. I couldn’t very well cut it down to be part of a box, but I had no large frame-and-panel work coming up – so I knew one day I’d carve every inch of it. The scale was perfect for one of these Devon/Ipswich style carvings. I mapped it out, carved about 1/3 of it, intending to take it to a class I was teaching to use as a demo piece. Then forgot it when I packed the car. Came home from the class and finished it off.

This panel bears some relationship to the wainscot chair made by Thomas Dennis that’s at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. I combined elements from that piece with other related works to compose a design that is recognizable as belonging to that group, but is not a direct copy of any of it. Here’s 2 details of the panel

detail 1

and the bottom half

detail 2

I made a few ladderbacks in the past month, one of which was to bring with me to the class I just finished at Pete Galbert’s. These recent chairs are the first of a batch of white oak chairs that will take me a while to get through…

white oak w hickory bark

The photo’s a bit crooked, not the chair. It’s been fun working this much white oak, I mostly get red around here. Linseed oil finish. Hickory bark seat, woven in a diamond-pattern. The bark was a few strips from the end of a batch, over time their color and texture will blend just fine. Sitting on bark seats creates the best finish they can get.

diamond weave hickory bark seat

I decided I’m even going to keep one of these chairs. For all the time I’ve spent on them in the past eight or so years, I have none in my house, they all got sold. Time to change that.

overall view

This chair is for sale – $1,600 includes shipping in the US. I didn’t measure this particular chair, but it’s my standard Jennie Alexander-style chair – they’re about 33 1/2” high, width across the front c. 17” and depth of the seat about12”. Seat height around 17 1/4”. 

If you’re interested in this chair, send an email to me at PeterFollansbee7@gmail.com and we can sort out the details. You can send a check or I can send a paypal invoice – including their fee, $1,658. If you come pick it up, we’ll call it $1,450.

I wrote about this on my substack blog the other day but realized I should put it here too, just in case. I got news last week that Vimeo on Demand is going to shut down. I have several videos posted there – so if you have bought any of those – first of all – thanks, those videos were/are a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. And I appreciate the support I got from readers who bought them…helped me keep my head above water. Once they disappear from Vimeo, I’ll still have them – and I’ll try to find a new way to make them available. BUT – this part’s important – IF you did buy them (or if you do before Sept 21, 2026)- download them before they vanish. That deadline is Nov 20th. Here’s what their email said:

Starting on September 21, 2026:

• Customers won’t be able to make new purchases or start subscriptions

Between September 21, 2026 and November 20, 2026:

• Your existing VOD content will remain available to customers who already purchased it
• Your seller account will remain accessible

On November 20, 2026:

• Vimeo On Demand will be phased out completely
• All VOD listings will be removed
• Customers will no longer be able to access previously purchased content

This link is to a page on my website pointing to a number of the videos – https://www.peterfollansbee-joiner.com/videosondemand

That page links to several videos – two on carving – one about strapwork patterns and the other about S-scrolls that come from Dedham, Massachusetts

strapwork pattern

There’s also furniture projects; the joined chest with a drawer and two chairs – one the Jennie Alexander chair and the other an Alpine/German/Swiss, etc “brettstuhl”.

Braintree chest w drawer, 2022

There’s two videos that came after that page was created – one about carving this pattern:

Here’s the link to that one – https://vimeo.com/ondemand/honeychurchpattern

And most recently, a work-in-progress, about the cupboard that’s the subject of my newest book from Lost Art Press – The Essex County Cupboard

I have at least one more video to add to that set – but the collection isn’t so much a how-to of every step of building that cupboard, but a view into many of the individual steps – right now, there’s 10 “chapters” totaling almost 5 hours of video.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/504407

All right. Just a heads-up. Nothing lasts forever…

[If you read my substack blog, skip this one. Just notifying readers of the new book about the Essex County cupboard.]

PF version of 1680s Essex County Massachusetts cupboard

I was the luckiest woodworker around when I got the chance to make TWO versions of one of the most elaborate cupboards I know…and even more so when Lost Art Press (who else?) agreed to turn my notes and photos into a book.

The link for ordering is here – https://lostartpress.com/products/17th-century-essex-county-cupboard

I first saw the cupboard this is based on in 1998 – it’s in the collections at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. At that point, I was embarking on a study with my friend Bob Trent of this cupboard and its relatives. That study took a couple of years to research, digest and write.

PF photo of the Paine/Sawyer family cupboard at MHS

Along the way I had a chance to collaborate with my joiner-friends Ted Curtin and Rob Tarule – they were building a copy of a related example to be exhibited at the Saugus Iron Works – and they included me in some of that work. Then in 2001 the article I worked on with Trent and Alan Miller was published in the 2001 edition of American Furniture. At that point, I figured that my Essex Co Cupboards notebook would go on the shelf and stay there. And so it did, for 20 years – when out of the blue I got asked would like me to make one! I jumped at the chance and was twice-blessed. I wrote enough about the project that another person chimed in & said “I want one too.”

Along the way I shot a bunch of video of the process in addition to the photos for the book. I’ve edited a bunch of those – about 5 hours’ worth and made a vimeo-on-demand page for them. Think of them as a companion to the book. All the details are in the book. Many of the processes are presented in the video series. Link is here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/504407

I posted a sample video of about 10 minutes of setting the pintle hinges on the cupboard door over on my substack blog. That video is above the paywall – so you should be able to see it. Maybe you need a free subscription – those that get the truncated posts. Often those are about half the length of the full post…

https://peterfollansbeejoinerswork.substack.com/p/the-cupboard-book-is-done

detail upper case of the 2nd version