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SAPFM Society of American Period Furniture Makers
For anyone interested in American furniture — the tools, the people, the history.

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The knowledge in this craft lives in scattered people, and not enough of it gets written down. SAPFM gathers both — at chapter meetings, at the annual conference, on the pages of the journal and the magazine — so the work sharpens with practice and the record of how American furniture is made, and was made, thickens behind us.

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Member-built period piece
A Federal card table after a Salem original, c. 1798. Built in 2025 by David Lamb. Mahogany, satinwood inlay, light staining throughout. See more from this maker →

On the bench this month

Updated monthly
From Pins & Tales · Spring 2026

Cutting bellflower stringing on the Shaper Origin

By [author], with examples from a Connecticut card table, c. 1795.

The Federal cabinetmakers in Hartford and New Haven knew their inlay vocabulary cold — bellflowers ran in regular sequence down the legs of card tables, sideboards, secretaries, and more. The proportion was tight: a flower wide enough to read at three feet, stringing thin enough that the curve didn't break.

What no eighteenth-century maker had was a way to lay out the curve without freehand. Today, a Shaper Origin can hold the line. The question this article addresses is how to do that without losing the period's intent.

The piece walks through layout, wood selection (holly for the stringing, light dye for the bell), depth-of-cut for the recess, and the gluing sequence that prevents the inlay from telegraphing through the satinwood ground. Eight pages, with shop drawings.

Read the full piece in Pins & Tales → members-only
From the video archive

Phil Lowe on inlay layout

47 minutes · chapter transcripts

Phil Lowe at the bench

One of thirty-six videos in the Members Desktop archive. Chapter markers let you jump to the stringing section directly.

Watch the chapter on stringing inlay (3:14) →
From a chapter meeting

Peach State, last Saturday

Fifteen members, working session on hand-cut dovetails, hosted in a member's shop near Atlanta. Next meeting: June 1, joinery study group, same shop.

See what other chapters are up to →

Twenty-two chapters. Through the year.

Find your chapter →
Chapter Last met Next meeting
CarolinasApr 27May 25 — pole lathes, member's shop
FloridaMay 4Jun 1 — finishing demo
Gulf StateApr 20May 18 — joinery study group
Mid-South— between leads —
New England (North)May 3Jun 7 — Phil Lowe library tour
New England (South)Apr 13May 11 — chair-bottom weaving
New YorkApr 12May 10 — Met study trip
Peach StateMay 4Jun 1 — hand-cut dovetails
PhiladelphiaApr 19May 17 — Federal card table layout
PittsburghApr 26May 24 — Workshop visit
Western ReserveMay 3Jun 7 — TBA
11 more chapters · full directory →
Annual Conference · October 2026

Williamsburg, four days, one chair to fill.

The 2026 Annual Conference returns to Colonial Williamsburg the week of October [dates]. Bench demonstrations, member presentations, a tour of the Anthony Hay cabinet shop with Kaare Loftheim, the Cartouche Award presentation, and the long evenings between sessions where most of the actual work happens.

Registration opens [date]. See last year's program →

Est. 1999

A note on how this started.

Two makers — Steve Lash and Mickey Callahan — sat at the same table at the Working Wood in the 18th Century conference in Williamsburg, January 1999. By the end of the year, SAPFM was incorporated. Twenty-five years on: twenty-two chapters, two journals, a national conference each summer, and the quiet network underneath it all.

Read our history →

The tools, the people, the history.

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