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14 Cottage St
Blackburn, VIC, 3130
Australia

0413 537 490

The Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking was founded by Alastair Boell in 2007. After graduating from the world renowned North Bennet Street School, Boston (USA) Alastair felt that there was a great need in Australia for an educational facility that focuses on traditional skills. 

The Guild is committed to preserving and advancing craft traditions in furniture making. We are also committed to promoting a greater awareness and appreciation of
craftsmanship. In our classes we emphasize the skillful use of hand tools and power equipment and an informed use of appropriate materials. We are passionate about what we do and want to share information, ideas and skills with all our students young and old, from beginner to advanced.

People

Filtering by Category: Instructors

Alastair Boell

Tom Beattie

Alastair Boell was awarded a Bachelor of Education (Arts and Crafts) at Melbourne University, majoring in ‘Furniture Making’ in 1990. A month after graduating, he moved to Japan, where he taught English and made furniture for his own pleasure for eight years. While living there, he became heavily influenced by the Japanese design aesthetic.

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Lionel Seibert

Tom Beattie

Mainly passionate by transferring his knowledge of traditional French woodworking and marquetry techniques, Lionel also believes that in this fast world of production it is sometimes important to stop and take the time to use, share and enjoy these old-style techniques when working with such a pure and fine material such as timber.

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Peter Kruithof

Tom Beattie

A chair maker by trade Peter Kruithof has spent over 25 years working in the boutique and commercial furniture industries. His experience covers contemporary/modern furniture, antique reproduction furniture, bar and restaurant furniture and fittings, shop fitting, furniture polishing and design. Currently as a furniture maker under his own banner he works closely with designers and customers to produce beautiful custom made pieces. He has also recently turned his hand to artisanal pipe making and has discovered a passion for the art of blending form, function and finishing that is required to produce a high grade pipe.

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Zac Frankel

Tom Beattie

In 2006 Zac completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Monash University with a major in silversmithing and jewellery. While pursuing this he became interested in working with timber. He went on to complete a Certificate II in Furniture Making before working both independently and for several other makers, until he got a job working for Pop and Scott - the Melbourne-based furniture and homewares business. He worked there for four years, spending most of his time there as head furniture maker. He produced the prototypes of new products and was also engaged in some of their design. He eft there in November 2019 to develop an independent practice.

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Garrett Hack

Tom Beattie

Garrett Hack taught at The Guild in 2013. His earliest memories were of sawing and hammering, so naturally after pursuing civil engineering and architecture at Princeton over forty years ago he became a furniture maker. Fundamental to Garrett’s work are hand tools, for the polish of surfaces they cut and the subtle variations possible working by hand and eye rather than machine.

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Peter Galbert

Tom Beattie

Peter taught at The Guild in 2011 and has also taught at numerous craft schools around the USA, including the Penland School of Crafts, the North Bennet Street School, the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Kelly Mehlers School of Woodworking, Highland Woodworking, the Arrowmont School of Crafts and The Port Townsend School of Woodworking.

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Christopher Schwarz

Tom Beattie

Christopher Schwarz taught at The Guild in 2012. He is a long-time woodworker and writer who has spent over 20 years encouraging woodworkers to embrace more handwork in their shops. He built his first workbench when he was 11 and was introduced to handwork when his family built its first house on an Arkansas farm without electricity.

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Steve Latta

Tom Beattie

Steve Latta makes both contemporary and traditional furniture while teaching woodworking at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology and Millersville University in Lancaster County, PA. For the past several years, Steve has been a contributing editor to Fine Woodworking magazine and has released several videos on inlay and furniture construction.

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Des King

Tom Beattie

After building the foundation in making shoji, Des turned his focus to the intricate patterns that can be made by kumiko within shoji. After completing a 12-month post-graduate course in tategu at the International College of Craft and Art in Toyama, Japan Des returned to Australia and set up a workshop in the Gold Coast where this became the central theme of his work.

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Tom Fidgen

Tom Beattie

Tom Fidgen is a designer/maker author, musician, living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Tom has written for Fine Woodworking Magazine, Popular Woodworking Magazine, Canadian Woodworking Magazine, Furniture & Cabinet Making Magazine, British Woodworking Magazine, as well as the Lee Valley Tools Newsletter.

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Terry Gordon

Tom Beattie

During a 3 year posting in Malaysia with the RAAFTerry Gordon learned how to wood carve and how to use wooden planes with a local cabinet maker. In essence, he discovered that the planes that this particular Chinese cabinet maker was using were superior to the Western planes. Therefore, he had decided to make his own. Other people appreciated them and the rest is history.

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Hank Tyler

Tom Beattie

Mr. Tyler is an internationally known sculptor of birds in wood. Having grown up on Maine’s coast, shorebirds and oceanic birds are Tyler’s most consistently chosen subjects. The designs and proportions of Tyler’s bird sculptures are generally reflective of the actual birds and their behaviours.

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Susan Wraight

Tom Beattie

Originally a jeweller, Susan Wraight belongs to a western revival of an eastern tradition of miniature sculptures named Netsuke. Japanese in origin, Netsuke were originally used as toggles and were worn between the Edo period 1615-1868.

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Rafael Bieber

Tom Beattie

Since the mid 1980’s Rafael has been an avid amateur photographer, which soon led to the learning of picture framing in Warnambool. He has continued to work in this field in Melbourne ever since.

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Robert Howard

Tom Beattie

As a regular contributor to the Australian Wood Review since June 1996, I have watched fine woodworking evolve from the fringe hobby of a dedicated few, into a substantial industry spread around the world. For me, spoon carving completes a circle, because the very first things I ever carved, way back in 1980, were a spoon and a bowl.

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Peter Young

Tom Beattie

Peter is a former research scientist who has been designing and making furniture for the past 20 years after retraining at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine.

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Hugh Anderson

Tom Beattie

Hugh is a retired anaesthetist with a life-time interest in woodworking. His professional career, spanning some 40 years, was spent mostly in a major teaching hospital, involved in the anaesthesia and management of trauma, and the teaching of anaesthesia trainees, medical students and nurses.

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