Roger Myers CF ’14
Roger was featured in an article in Woodworker’s Journal in October 2017. They highlighted his NBSS experience below.
“For Roger Myers, woodworking is a second career. Although he was involved in woodworking while working in his corporate career in the manufacturing and engineering field, even to the point of serving as president of the Guild of New Hampshire Woodworkers, it was after his retirement that he opened his woodworking business.
Roger also went back to school, studying furniture at the prestigious North Bennet Street School. He and his wife had heard some friends of his give presentations about the school at a conference on 18th century woodworking, and when they came home, ‘She asked me I ever thought about attending North Bennet Street School, and I said, ‘Well, anybody that’s been working with wood has, but it’s expensive and I won’t get in.’ And she said, ‘Well, I think you ought to try. So I applied and was accepted. That was a quick entry to, really the higher end of woodworking, if you will.”
The NBSS experience, Roger said, ‘was an opportunity to really embrace the craft and take whatever skill set I had and try to develop it further.” He feels he came out of the school with “the ability to analyze and solve just about any problem that comes up in woodworking, whether it’s how to construct something with the appropriate joinery or how to deal with an issue that comes up. It’s just a quest for total perfection in what you do. It’s not almost good enough. It’s right, or it’s wrong.’
Although his interest at that time and before had been mainly American period furniture, such as Queen Anne and Federal styles – Roger was a regular visitor to the annual conferences of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers — he has since branched out in the styles he works in. Roger was also an Invited Artist in 2017 with the New Hampshire Furniture Masters Association. ‘It’s quite an honor,’ he said. ‘I’m continuing to learn and to aspire to hit the level of some of these people who I really look up to – and you’re never too old to do it.’
For himself, Roger said, a big part of the appeal of woodworking is ‘the ability to leave something behind that’s tangible. Many of the things that we do in our corporate life, they may have benefit for the moment, but they’re long since forgotten. When you’re creating something, you create a piece of art or a piece of furniture, hopefully it’s going to be enjoyed for generations.'”
