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In 1776, Thomas Jefferson commissioned Benjamin Randolph, a Philadelphia cabinetmaker, to build a compact lap desk to serve as a portable office. This small mahogany box, now prominently [...]

The first time I encountered this table in the White Water Shaker collection, it was locked in a storeroom with more than a dozen other pieces. To my eye, there was something unusual about it. [...]

  Construction lumber dressed up for display. For sturdy, attractive and affordable material to build these shelves, bypass the fancy stuff at the front of your local home center and head [...]

Small tables are useful just about anywhere in the home. They can be easy to build, but a good design is important. To make the design more interesting, tapered legs (often part of Shaker, [...]

  A clever design yields portable functionality. My father-in-law gave me a table just like this one on our last trip to Portugal. He picked it up in Serra de Monchique, a small mountain [...]

Expand your casework repertoire with a curvaceous front. One of the most interesting aspects of a serpentine chest, with its front concave at the ends and convex in the center, is how the wood [...]

My Uncle Bob was a butcher—not the woodworking kind people joke about, but the real thing. In his off hours, he used to switch blades and put his meat-cutting bandsaw to work as a woodworking [...]

Though not traditional, router patterns make quick work of the inlay. In southeastern Pennsylvania, just northwest of Philadelphia, is Chester County. It was one of the original three counties [...]

This simple modular shelf offers plenty of options for reconfiguration. Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the December 2012 issue of Popular Woodworking. One symptom of my [...]

Steam-bending or bent laminations can be used to make this eye-catching design. The design of this table is part of a series that I revisit from time to time. The original concept for the series [...]

Three variations on a carved foot offer high style. Access to information provides the modern woodworker with greater variety, and it challenges their skills more than their 18th-century [...]

Expose your joinery skills with this Arts & Crafts classic. In the early 1900s, furniture maker Gustav Stickley began producing a unique style of furniture that he called “Craftsman.” At the [...]