Rooted in mettle.
We didn’t originally plan to start a custom design and craft fabrication firm. It happened organically, through an innate interest in artisanry, a steady persistence to sharpen our skill, and a constant inclination to think, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?”
Back in 2010, our three founders - Louie and Joe Andracchio and Jack Braithwaite - studied liberal arts, engineering and business, but after class we made a hobby out of making things with our hands. Someone would find a weird chunk of wood and say, “We should do something with this.” Before we knew it we were building saloon doors and skeeball tables for our friends.
We found much of our early inspiration through the iconic work of American craftsman George Nakashima. The blending of traditional woodworking with a live-edge aesthetic, of elegant joinery combined with cracks and knots, demonstrated to us the right mix of class and character. Perfectly functional, and yet unmistakably distinctive.
Louie Andracchio
Jack Braithwaite
Our fascination with Nakashima stemmed from a shared respect for natural materials. We enjoyed letting the shape and form of wood dictate what it wanted to be. Instead of simply processing lumber into objects - what a factory does - preserving elements of the tree’s past made it feel like it still had a story to tell. That’s what ultimately makes a piece feel enduring: identifying the spirit of the material, and translating that into an ideal use for man.
In 2014, we turned our passion into an enterprise, and founded Timber Forge. We quickly grew from a basement, to a warehouse in Philadelphia’s Brewerytown neighborhood, to our current manufacturing facility in West Deptford, New Jersey. We have also evolved from specializing in custom luxury furniture for homes, to focusing on featured pieces for commercial and institutional spaces. With expertise in contemporary woodworking and metalworking that maintains a solid, traditional look and feel, we deliver full design-build capabilities and unforgettably creative artisanry.
Locally, our work ranges from dining tables and vertical garden framing at Kensington Quarters, to plasma-cut signage and stainless steel bar tops for the Philadelphia Horticultural Society, to mixed-material interior design and manufacturing for the Divine Lorraine Hotel, to a wide array of signature office furnishings for the new Aramark global headquarters and many other commercial and residential spaces.
Across the United States, we’ve worked with the National Park Service for a restaurant project at Yosemite National Park, the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas for multi-purpose furnishings, and restaurants around the country for booth, bar and lounge equipment of all kinds. In every case, we designed pieces to precisely fit the clients’ needs.
Every project is unique, but what you can always count on is our neverending willingness to ask, “Hey, wouldn’t it be incredible if we did this?” And, most importantly, you can trust us to make it happen.