Stuart Faulkner

Stuart trained as a scientific illustrator before enjoying a career in design in London, and later, as partner in a Sydney based studio. Intending to return to London to study furniture design, life and marriage intervened.

Instead, he undertook a cabinet making trade course, and in 1997 completed the full-time course at the Sturt School for Wood, Australia. Upon graduating, he was invited to design and teach courses for Sturt’s fledgling short course programme and was employed as head teacher of Furniture and Product Design at the Centre for Furnishing Trades, Lidcombe TAFE.

Stuart returned to Sturt as the fulltime director of the Certificate IV Furniture course in 2010 and in 2013 he and his wife started a 10 year journey offering recreational woodworking courses in Sydney under the banner Heartwood Creative Woodworking.

Lou Fuller - Lead Tutor

Lou is our Full-time Lead Tutor here at the school, teaching terms 1 & 2 of the full-time Furniture Making Programme as well as teaching short courses throughout the rest of year. Lou oversees all of our Visiting Tutors, as well as our Workshop Assistants, keeping everything humming with grace and good humour.

Lou completed a degree in Furniture Design & Craftsmanship in the UK and moved to New Zealand in 2006. She set up and taught a furniture making programme for at-risk youth through the YMCA, which she ran for three years. Lou designs and makes furniture, has been involved with the school since 2010, and has also taught in Australia, Canada, and the USA.

Lou has worked extensively with Michael Fortune who she met here on his first visit. Since then she has worked as his teaching assistant in Australia, NZ and the USA as well as making his privately commissioned furniture for the Canadian Embassies in Berlin, Chicago, Jakarta, and most recently for the Wellington Chancery in NZ.

Brian Reid

An honors graduate of Parnham College (Dorset, UK), Brian studied under the renowned designer Sir John Makepeace and principal Robert Ingham. He is the 5th from only a total of 8 Americans to have attended this distinguished program.

Brian splits his time between furniture making and fine woodworking course instruction with over 15 years of teaching worldwide in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand. At the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship (Rockport, ME), he leads the twelve week intensive programme and is former senior fellow of the Studio Fellowship Programme. He also lectures and speaks about contemporary design practices and the history of furniture to a wide range of audiences.

www.brianreidfurniture.com

Michael Fortune

Michael Fortune has designed and made furniture since 1975 for private residences across North America.

He received the prestigious Bronfman Award in 1993, was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 2000 and received the 2007 Award of Distinction from the Furniture Society. He graduated from Sheridan College near Toronto in 1974 and then interned with Alan Peters in Devon England.

Michael is acknowledged for both his technical and design expertise and has taught worldwide. He continues to be fascinated by chair design and construction.

www.michaelfortune.com

Hape Kiddle

As a sculptor and jeweller Hape has been working for many years refining a language in shape and form that reflects his deep connection to the natural world.  This relationship is at the heart of all his work and is a reflection on the spiritual connection humans have to all of ecology.

Hape’s work demonstrates the development of this language through the mediums of wood, stone and precious metals. 

For more than a decade Hape has shared his love of making things by hand. There is a slowing down and reconnection to self that happens in this process that is something that really resonates for his students.

www.hapekiddle.com

David Upfill-Brown

David studied furniture making and design at Parnham, John Makepeace’s school, in England under the remarkable tutelage of Robert Ingham. David loves teaching and has done so since the early ‘90s - at the Australian National University, the Australian School of Fine Furniture, as lead instructor at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine and Sturt School for Wood.

His greatest pleasure is witnessing students find ability deep within themselves, seeing how the craft generates a powerful physical, practical, emotional, almost primal intelligence, seeing them become something like dancers or athletes, individuals whose minds speak through their bodies.

www.davidupfillbrown.com

Aled Lewis

Aled Lewis is a furniture designer from Wales. He has over 40 years experience in designing and making furniture and products for private, corporate and education institutions in the UK and the USA. He has been a teacher and instructor for 20 years and the Lead Instructor for the Nine Month Programme at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in the USA for 11 years. He continues to teach in the USA , Australia and the UK.

Aled is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers. He exhibits work in London and New York and his work is in private collections in both the UK and USA. His work has been awarded a Bespoke Guild Mark for the Furniture Maker’s Company.

Aled Lewis’s solo exhibition at MOMA Machynlleth in 2024 titled “Making the Cut” exhibited a collection of furniture, products, drawing and sketches from the past ten years.

www.aledlewisfurniture.com

Vimeo on Aled Lewis discussing furniture making and design.

Roy Schack

After ten years in the merchant bank industry, Roy recognised a need to have a more tactile career. On completing his studies at the Sturt School for Wood in 1994, he opened up his first workshop in Brisbane and has been operating from Queensland ever since.

Roy’s school is The Brisbane School of Fine Woodwork, and he makes under the banner of Roy Schack Fine Furniture.

The things that matter most to Roy as a designer–maker include quality without compromise, a good working relationship with his clients and above all else, his enjoyment in the process.

www.royschack.com

Andy Buck

Andy Buck is a furniture maker, sculptor, and educator. Currently a full professor
and programme chair for the Furniture Design Programme at the Rochester Institute of Technology, USA.

Andy holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and BA from Virginia Commonwealth University. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Art & Design, Museum of Applied Art, Frankfurt, and the Boston Museum of Fine Art. Andy’s colourful work of furniture and sculpture
is included in a many of private and public collections.

www.andybuck.com

Will Bayliss

William is a multi-award winning craftsman who started as an apprentice with Dunstone Design in Australia.

William was awarded the 2020 scholarship to attend the Michael Fortune Residency Programme where he made his extraordinary Cable Bay Cabinet.

In 2021, William took out overall winner as well as winning in the Tables, Chairs & Desks category with his Bunyjul Occasional Tables. 

Will has been invited back here to be involved in the 2024 Michael Fortune Residency as technician/teaching assistant to Mr Fortune & Lou Fuller.

Kelly Parker

Kelly Parker is a designer and maker of contemporary studio furniture and sculpture. After 18 years of working in the corporate world she took a side track into art.

She has been awarded a professional development grant from the Furniture Society, was the first recipient of a professional development grant awarded by the Krenov Foundation and was recently awarded Best in Show at the biannual chair exhibition, American Craft Today.

Her work has been featured in Fine Woodworking, Australian Wood Review, and Rooted. Kelly’s work often incorporates other materials such as metal, glass and acrylic.

She is a passionate advocate for the craft and enjoys sharing her knowledge with others.

www.woodsongstudio.com

David Haig

David is an internationally renowned furniture maker based in Nelson, New Zealand. Over the last three decades David has been commissioned to design and make a wide range of furniture for private clients all over the globe. David is highly respected in his field of expertise which is steam bending and curvature and is best known for his Signature and Monogram rocking chairs.

David has been involved with us since the very early days as well as regularly teaching at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine for almost twenty years.

www.davidhaig.co.nz

Thorkild Hansen

3/6/1969-6/11/2021

Moe mai, moe mai, moe mai rā, e hoa  
We hold you in our hearts

Thorkild was born into a creative family environment - his father Jens Hansen was the renowned Danish silversmith. Much of Thorkild's former working life was spent designing and creating jewellery in the family business. After a change in career to furniture making and teaching, Thorkild's furniture design was an amalgam of Danish modernist design, exploring functional simplicity with a focus on materiality within the tradition of fine woodworking.

Thorkild inspired many, many of our past and existing students.

Tony Clark

After 25 years as a telecommunications support engineer, Tony decided it was time for a career change and in 2009 enrolled on the Furniture Makers’ Programme at the Centre for Fine Woodworking and from then on has made woodworking the career of his choice.

Tony runs the Jointworks Studio with Jane, making commission pieces, repairs and bespoke items for the studio. Tony believes that by reusing wood in a creative way then the tree lives on in a different form. In 2019 Tony was invited to design a range of introductory workshops here at the school and very successfully ran our first ever women only course.

www.jointworks.co.nz

Dave Gilberd

Dave Gilberd has spent a lifetime working with fine machinery - currently as owner-operator of the Brightwater Motors vehicle mechanics workshop but also as a qualified aircraft engineer, high-tech engineer, film set fabricator and motorbike fan-boy. Since taking a short instrument-building course in 2003 Dave’s heart has been most taken with guitar-building and further training at the Totnes School of Guitar-Making in the UK led to the launch of Goldbeard Guitars.

Dave has brought countless guitars into being - ranging from electro-acoustic, small body and blues style - has taught over 150 students the craft of instrument-building, and revived numerous old and damaged pieces.

www.goldbeard.co.nz

Geoff Korver

Geoff is based in Christchurch, and has been a woodcarver for more than 40 years, specialising in traditional forms, especially incised lettering and relief carving.

As an artist he has worked mainly on private commissions and exhibitions, and is currently making the transition to a full time artist.

Geoff Korver is an active member of the Canterbury Guild of Woodworkers, as a carver and tutor.

In 2014 Geoff was invited to teach an introductory carving course and spoon carving, and has since then developed a suite of carving courses that we run each year.

Grant Palliser

Grant embarked on his artistic career at the age of 38 when he completed a Fine Art degree and teaching qualification at Ilam School of Art. Initially he planned to make painting his primary focus but discovered sculpture and made it his major. In Nelson alone he has six public sculptures all of which are significant in some way to the Nelson community. 

Until recently Grant worked for many years as a part-time art teacher at Nelson College for Girls and has been a wonderful role model for young aspiring artists. More recently Grant has reconnected with painting and printmaking through participating in a residency in Ireland with other art educators. Grant teaches the drawing component of the Furniture Makers’ Programme.

www.grantpalliser.co.nz

Ben Grant

Following an apprenticeship in the UK, Ben worked on house renovations and refurbishments, but after a few years felt the draw towards more detailed work.

Returning to New Zealand he then made kitchens, cabinetry, stair building and CNC programming but still the draw towards fine furniture was unquenched. More recently Ben set up shop in his 50m2 garage ”plugging” away at a great variety of things.

Since attending the 2020 Michael Fortune Residency Programme Ben was invited to be involved in our “Emerging Tutor Project” kindly funded by Creative New Zealand.

Ben attended the 2025 Residency with Yuri Kobayashi and David Haig creating a gorgeous curved shelf (pictured below.)

Ben teaches our “Introduction to Laminating & Coopering” and “Wood Bending Techniques”