Furniture Builder Has a Way With Wood

Alice Porembski’s workshop is no-frills.

The table saw, drill press, lathe, joiner, planer and radial arm saw are each there to do a job. The only thing extraneous in the place is the sawdust. The only thing refined is the music on the radio. From these stark surroundings, elegance emerges.

This is the place where Porembski, 48, turns her visions into furniture--carefully crafted pieces that can’t easily be described.

“Elegant. Useful. Eclectic.” Porembski tosses out a few suggestions, but nothing seems an exact fit.

“Laborious” may be the best word. The wood tables, cabinets and other pieces are created over many months. Joinery is precise. Woods are rich and textured, with names like Purpleheart and Quilted Maple. And style is varied, from a “Melted Cheese” table with slumping ends to fanciful 5-foot-high kaleidoscopes carefully balanced on delicate wooden feet.

“I like to take traditional forms of furniture and do something different with them,” Porembski said. “I want it to be something new and different that hasn’t been seen by other people.”

Porembski’s work has won awards and been accepted for juried shows, including the prestigious California Design shows in San Francisco. Her furniture has been featured in galleries from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest.

The furniture brings top dollar. Prices start at $1,300 for a small table and go to $8,000 for a stereo cabinet.

“I can’t afford my own furniture,” said Porembski, who lives in a modest Redding home.

Building artistic furniture for her company, Magic Sticks, is not a quick way to riches. Porembski sometimes swings a hammer to supplement her income. She’s a licensed general contractor who does specialty cabinetry.

Porembski got a degree from the University of Illinois in anthropology and went to work doing archeological studies in Vermont. In her spare time, she worked with wood.

She and several friends opened an arts-and-crafts store in Montpelier, Vt., in the 1970s. Porembski built furniture to sell at the store. That’s also when she gained her construction experience. The group built solar homes.

Sometimes she wakes up with a picture in her mind of a new creation. Other times she does commission work for people who want her style brought to a piece that meets their needs.

“We usually sit down and have a cup of coffee and I make napkin drawings,” she said.