By the end of the year they had incorporated SAPFM. Twenty-five years on: twenty-two chapters, two journals, a national conference each summer, and the quiet network underneath it all.
If you're at all interested in this sort of tool work, in woodworking, in American furniture — and you've found yourself here — stay, and learn. Information about the crafts, people and histories is spread very thin. We bring it together at meetings, at conferences, in publications.
SAPFM is a volunteer-run, non-profit educational organization. Members include working professionals, hobbyists, museum curators, collectors, historians, instructors, and a number of people who hold more than one of those at once. What they share is a working interest in American period furniture — the techniques, the proportions, the woods, the regional schools, the makers — and a willingness to do the work themselves.
The Society publishes the annual American Period Furniture journal and the quarterly Pins & Tales magazine, hosts a national conference each fall, and supports twenty-two regional chapters that meet through the year. It administers the Cartouche Award annually for lifetime achievement. When the program is active, it issues educational grants in the name of John McAlister, the 2001 Cartouche recipient and a SAPFM founder.
Each year the Society recognizes an individual whose achievements best reflect SAPFM's mission. The Cartouche Award acknowledges craftsmen, educators, conservators, and supporters — professional or hobbyist — who have inspired or instructed others, or who have simply made the world more pleasing as a result of their skillful labors. The recipient is honored at the Cartouche Award banquet at the Annual Conference.
The award is named for the actual bronze cartouche from which the trophy is cast — a Philadelphia tall case clock built by Gene Landon, the 2003 recipient. The bronze is cast by Dana Stewart in Lambertville, NJ. The base is mahogany, made by SAPFM founder Mickey Callahan.
Twenty-five years. Twenty-two chapters. The conversation continues.
