About Greg Smyth and Heartwood Furniture...
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My passion for timber... began
as a teenager when I built my first woodturning lathe and spent
countless hours shaping almost every type of timber I could find.
Leaving school at the age of seventeen, I served a formal apprenticeship
spending my four years with two very different companies. Working
with craftsmen of many different disciplines, I gained broad experience
building everything from hospital cabinetry to detailed solid timber
church furniture, from bank counters to fine reproductions. All
the while, I developed a small studio workshop at home.
My post apprenticeship
experience was primarily with Nicholas Dattner & Co, one of Melbourne's leading solid timber
furniture manufacturers, where I was introduced to many of this country's
rare and beautiful native species. Over a period of ten years I
was able to test, hone and adapt many traditional joinery techniques,
applying them to timbers often difficult to work. This experience
provided the basis for the techniques that are taught and practiced
in our workshop today.
The Heartwood furniture ethos... seeks to combine
carefully selected Australian timbers and refined traditional joinery
techniques to fresh, contemporary design ideas. We recognise the
need for furniture that is both pleasing to the eye and practical,
and work towards producing pieces that will endure, giving pleasure
not only to their present owners but to those generations to come...
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