“Building a New Way of Learning” is a four-part series on Sam Beauford Woodworking Institute, a premier accredited trade school in Adrian, Michigan, where traditional techniques meet contemporary practice. Through the perspectives of the founder, a student, an instructor, and a weekend learner, this series explores the ways a school can radically transform the community around it.
During the week that Kristie Brablec first visited Sam Beauford Woodworking Institute, wildfire smoke had drifted over Michigan, turning the sky yellow. But inside SBWI’s old brick building, seven strangers who had gathered for one of SBWI’s weeklong workshops bent over their workbenches, completely focused on their work.
Kristie Brablec sanding her assembled Mid Century Lounge Chair at the SBWI
“The world outside stopped,” Kristie remembers, “and we just kind of kept going. Which was bonding in its own way.”
At 50, Kristie is a self-described “lapsed artist” who traded a ceramics degree for a career in food. Her culinary travel business keeps her on the road six months out of the year, and she had reached a point where burnout had caught up with her. For the first time since starting with the company, she took a week off. Rather than head to a beach, she returned to Lenawee County, where she had grown up, to learn to build a mid-century chair.
Kristie at the router table
Kristie arrived at SBWI convinced she was “the weakest link.” Her fellow students all had prior woodworking experience; she had none. But the school had built a scaffolding for beginners just like Kristie, with well-designed jigs and patient guidance. “They had a really thoughtful process for all stages of people,” Kristie says. A fellow student took her under his wing until she found her footing, and soon, she was the one finishing early and helping others.
The workshop offered all the guidance she needed to build an heirloom piece, but left room for individual expression. Kristie “went rogue,” she says, introducing maple into her mostly cherrywood chair, and turning a botched router cut into a repeating design feature. “I go for it with unjustified confidence,” she says of her artistic practice. “I don’t want what I make to be completely perfect. There should be human flaws in it.”
Kristie had come to SBWI to reconnect with the pleasure of working with her hands, but she found another kind of familiar connection in the woodshop. In her hospitality career, she’d spent years bringing people together around tables and shared meals. At SBWI, that same camaraderie grew around workbenches, through shared challenges and discoveries, and with the exchange of knowledge. “I felt quite a kinship with the people,” she says.
Since then, Kristie has had her handmade chair upholstered in a rich, emerald-green fabric. In a home filled with souvenirs from her travels, she considers it a treasure—one she knows will last for generations. In an increasingly throwaway culture, she sees schools like SBWI as essential to the future of craftsmanship. “We need pioneers like those guys to save these skills,” she says. “Because if we don’t, people are just going to go to IKEA.”
Kristie is already planning her next workshop at SBWI. She came to learn how to make a chair and left with a gorgeous new heirloom for her home, a renewed appetite for creative work, and a new appreciation for the connections that take shape when people make things together.
End of class celebratory group photo!
The Sam Beauford Woodworking Institute offers accredited programs in Furniture Design, Timber Framing, and Architectural Carpentry & Preservation as well as weekend and week-long classes that are open to anyone. You can learn more on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or online at sbwi.edu.
Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series
As seen in Craftsmanship Magazine