Summary
"This is what I've always loved doing," Alien says, gesturing toward the display items that visitors can sample next weekend, May 26 and 27, during the statewide Open Studios tour. He decided to devote himself to furniture making full-time in 1987, after retiring as director of the Hannaford Career Center, Addison County's vocational high school. "My family had a lot of heart problems," [Ed Alien] explains, noting that his father died of a coronary at age 44. "I figured, what the hell - I might as well just go for it."
He moved in 1978 to his current home on a cul-de-sac off Route 116. It looks like all the other suburbanstyle houses on South Leno Lane, except for the "Edward Alien Furniture Maker" sign on the front lawn. The house offers a good view of Mount Moosalamoo and the nearby Robert Frost "desert places," [Edward Allen] points out. "At this stage of my life," he says with a wrinkly grin, "I'm where I want to be."Alien describes one of his most popular products as a "three-drawer case." His customers refer to it as a jewelry box, for that's how they use it. But Alien eschews the term. "Shakers didn't wear jewelry," he points out. What's now a $495 dresser-top accessory was originally intended to hold bobbins and pins for hand-powered sewing machines. Alien modified the original design he came across at the Adirondack Museum by removing dividers inside each of the drawers and lining them with velvet.See the full content of this document
Extract
Good Wood
Edward Allen: Fine furniture with Shaker inspiration, 6 South Leno Lane (Rts. 116 and 125), Middlebury.
"Out of This World: Shaker Design Past, Present and Future," Shelbume Museum, June 16 October 28.www.shelburne nruseum.orgEdward Allen might be seen as the anti-Ethan Alien - the furniture company, that is, not its namesake Green Mo...See the full content of this document
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