When Nathan Stanley came back to Minneapolis in the late 1980s, he wasn’t sure what he’d be doing next. He’d originally learned the family trade from his father, a carpenter, but never intended to be a woodworker. Then while spending five years in England, he’d worked as a furniture maker. Since they make a lot of their doors at the jobsite, he got a good background in joinery. When he returned, in his early thirties, he worked as a finish carpenter until he got sick of it. Fortunately, he eventually found clients who encouraged him to add an extra curve here and there to his woodworking and, as he puts it, he began to push his luck. To his surprise, they liked what he did and let him use his imagination ever more. That helped him develop his aesthetic approach to the craft. And, by the time he was 35, he decided he could turn his woodwork into something more.
Things really took off when he connected with Minneapolis restaurateur Kieran Folliard, who wanted to build an upscale Irish pub and restaurant.
Word spread … Nathan has never advertised … and today he is nationally recognized for his room-sized creations … especially for his large-scale bars in both trendy Minneapolis restaurants and the dens of million-dollar homes in that city’s western suburbs. He recently won the People’s Choice Award at the Northern Woods Exhibition Of Fine Woodworking for his “Of Man’s First Disobedience” bed frame.
His interest and appreciation for bars and pubs comes from the time he spent in the British Isles. He came to see them as cathedrals … where you can buy a drink. When you walk into one, he thinks the space should feel like favorite music and like it’s an old friend. And he often incorporates stained glass in his bars to accentuate the connection. In his work he’s usually given free rein. A piece may incorporate both cherubs and bats to represent both hope and joy and crushing despair. He explains the extremes of his work as imperative elements of the yin and yang and often expresses them in a musical vocabulary.
Having established his reputation, Nathan enjoys a unique relationship with his clients. Those who request his services should be (and usually are) prepared to embrace his unique vision for their project. Not that he doesn’t listen to them.
When he presents clients with his first designs, they sometimes hold the rough sketch upside down. And that’s OK with Nathan.
Forewarned, most of his clients tell him to take the project forward. He builds everything in his studio in the garage behind his house — wedged between a coffee shop and an apartment building in a slightly down-in-the-heels South Minneapolis neighborhood. His tools are simple … a power saw, miter saw, and a lathe. Plus hand tools and lots of clamps.
He sands his raised panels by hand, so they won’t look perfect … that’s the charm. And another woodworker closely inspecting his work might notice that sometimes the grains on raised panels don’t quite match. He admits it’s occasionally just carelessness on his part, and sometimes he thinks he might be going too far with his designs. But his confidence seems to carry him through; he’s so certain that what he does will put music and emotion into his woodwork.
Nathan is currently working on a raised-panel structure for a multimillion-dollar home in the affluent suburb of Orono. One of his unexpected challenges is working around all the wiring and incorporating it into the piece. But he’ll work that out, and the result will contain both emotion and music.