David Lamb’s Canterbury workshop was a mess.
Wood shavings covered the floor. Old sawhorses held dusty panels of wood. There were Cool Whip containers on the floor, along with empty glass jars. The walls near the front door were not finished, beams exposed, and dirty paint brushes were everywhere.
But hold on. A piece of art, a masterpiece, sat in the middle of that dusty old studio, and that changed everything. Call it a bureau, and you might feel obligated to fold a shirt with perfect creases before placing it in one of four main draws.
“It’s detail city,” Lamb, a cabinetmaker for more than 40 years, said. “It’s incredible how many times you touch the same spot to get it done right.”
Lamb’s latest creation was almost done. Tropical outside, his shop hummed air conditioner-cool. The piece, delivered a week after my interview, took him 18 months to finish, and Lamb didn’t want the price tag on this one revealed.
“It’s not important how much it costs for your readers,” Lamb told me. “If that price gets out, people read and think, ‘That’s all he does, I can’t possibly approach him about something smaller.’ ”
His “smaller” stuff sells for about $3,500, but this baby was more. A lot more. But Lamb stressed how many hours he’d put in, making sure I realized his hourly rate wasn’t as titanic as first thought.
He’s known to celebrities through word of mouth, and has built furniture for Harrison Ford and former tennis star Ivan Lendl.
This piece went to his top customer, Diane Griffith of Nashua. She’s been a Lamb client for 36 years.
A unique story herself, Griffith, 74, is a retired government contractor who said she’s frugal, which is why she can bag groceries as a senior and still afford Lamb’s prices.
As for her latest purchase, “I’m slow to observe,” Griffith told me by phone, “but I already love it.”
Check Lamb’s work and you can see the sweat and thought. This was not a normal-looking bureau.
There were five three-sided, triangular-shaped draws on each side, with curving sides that pivot when opened.
The front portion had 14 more draws, including four large ones curving one way and 10 little draws curving the other way. On top, an oval frame waited for its mirror.
The piece had been sanded and shellacked, giving it a shine so smooth and perfect that fingerprints anywhere on it would have been tragic. Lamb explained that crotch wood – the area inside where two branches meet on the trunk – is best.
“I’m using it for grain structures, as opposed to physical need,” said Lamb, who’s 60. “It has a visual attribute, so it’s feathery, a lot of contrast, it shimmers, all that kind of stuff, and so I want something that really catches the eye and isn’t monotonous.”
The bureau’s 10, three-sided pivoting draws sat on a table, and Lamb showed the precision needed to cut each by inserting a draw, then pulling it out, which displayed the combination of a snug fit with smooth movement.
Meanwhile, his shop is steeped in history, and Lamb likes it that way, combining contemporary and detailed, 19th-century styles.
He had a three-year apprenticeship in the 1970s under Spaniard Alejandro de la Cruz, who fled the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He said de la Cruz created the foundation for his work.
Lamb studied at Boston University’s design school, married his high-school sweetheart, Janet, and set up shop at Shaker Village. He used words like integrity, craftsmanship, philosophy and design to describe his work, the things he learned beginning as a student at Belmont High School.
His love for 19th century simplicity and the past in general can be seen in all corners of his life. He lives in de la Cruz’s old home, 50 yards from his shop.
His old shop in Belmont, built in the 19th century, was scheduled to be torn down 20 years ago, so Lamb took it apart and trucked it to Canterbury. He’s since expanded it, and it remains a work in progress.
His shop comes in two parts: In the back, through the dusty workshop area and double glass-paneled doors, you’re transported back to the 1800s, when his collection of eight band saws were manufactured.
Some were built right here on Main Street in Concord by the John A. White Company – the name is clearly visible in raised gold letters – for distribution around the country.
Most of the saws work fine. Lamb cut a piece of wood using an 1890 model to show how it worked, flipping a switch and starting the roar of the electric motor. The band saw has two wheels, each three feet in diameter, and looked like a giant, old-school film projector. A solid steel line shaft turned the pulleys and powered the thin saw. Lamb immediately went back in time, saying, “You remember the mills when you hear this, the rumble of spinning pipe.”
Back in the dusty workshop, Lamb said that each piece of furniture starts with a sketch on a big whiteboard. He unfolded a tool roll, displaying a series of gouger tools, needed for the detailed work of carving flowers and such.
Janet, his wife of 32 years, often works with Lamb. He called her his primary consultant, in charge of aesthetic concerns, steel wooling, shellacking, cutting, waxing, detailed overlaying.
She pulled into their driveway and said, “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” when asked about the quality of her husband’s work. “He has the passion, he has the vision. I don’t know how he comes up with these designs.”
He’s been creating items for Griffith since 1982, when he sold her a secretary desk for about $20,000. She told me to figure out what it would be worth today.
All her furniture has been made by Lamb. “Living with Lamb,” is how she sees it.
Lamb delivers each piece of furniture personally, and jokingly said, “When I see a pothole, I slow down to 5 miles per hour.”
He sanded for five minutes, searching for that velvety smooth feel. Finally satisfied, Lamb said, “It’s all about refinement. Oh, that looks good.”