W. J. Lawrence, through dovetail corner W. J. Lawrence Custom Furniture Commission a piece
Nine drawer dresser in solid cherry, dovetailed at the top corners

Cut and fitted by hand,
one piece at a time.

Solid hardwood furniture, through dovetailed at every corner, built in a shop in Rehoboth, Massachusetts for the room it is going to stand in.

Tripod floor lamp
Tripod floor lamp
Wine cabinet
Wine cabinet
Four poster bed
Four poster bed
Chest on frame
Chest on frame
Selected work

Decades of Saturdays in a basement shop.

Side table
Side table
Collector’s cabinet
Collector’s cabinet
Sideboard
Sideboard
Cherry

It gets darker every year it stands in your house.

Black cherry starts pale and pulls down to a deep red brown with light and time. The piece you take delivery of is the lightest you will ever see it, and nothing is stained to fake the colour it will reach on its own.

Turned cherry leg on a coffee table: vase over ball over a turned foot
Joinery

The joint is on the outside, so it has to be right.

A through dovetail cannot be puttied, sanded out or hidden behind a moulding. Cutting it that way is a decision to be judged on it.

Case pieces
Dressers, chests, cabinets, blanket boxes
Tables
Dining, side and occasional, drawbored and pegged
Built to the room
Measured in your house and drawn to scale
Chest of drawers seen from the side, case dovetails running the full height
How it goes

Four steps, and a price that does not move.

01

Talk

What the piece is for, where it goes, and what it has to hold.

02

Drawing

A measured drawing and a price. Nothing is cut until both are agreed.

03

Build

Eight to sixteen weeks, with photographs as it goes.

04

Delivery

Brought and placed, not shipped in a carton and left on a porch.

The basement shop: a workbench with a plane and shavings, hand tools on the wall behind
The maker

Sault Ste. Marie to Rehoboth.

Bill Lawrence was born at the rapids in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, where Lake Superior falls into the St. Marys River. That water leaves the continent through the St. Lawrence. So did he.

He works alone, without a crew or a production line, and has been doing it for decades while holding down a full time job. That is the whole reason the work looks the way it does.

W. J. Lawrence, through dovetail corner
No. 152
Maker’s mark

Every piece is stamped in the bottom of a drawer before it leaves. One fifty two was the number on the house he grew up in, on Meadow Park Crescent.

It is not on the invoice, the website or the truck. It is the part of the piece only the person who owns it ever sees.

W. J. Lawrence, through dovetail corner
Design consultation

Tell us what the room needs.

The first conversation costs nothing and does not commit you to anything. Send the shape of the idea and we will come back with questions.

Hood of a tall case clock: carved rosette, fluted quarter columns, moon phase dial

Email
info@wjlfurniture.com
Call or text
(203) 962-4930
Shop
Rehoboth, Massachusetts. By appointment.

Calls and email are answered by Matteo Esposito, who handles commissions and scheduling. Bill is in the shop.