A Fleming County native, as was my great-great-great grandfather Hezekiah Hinton who was an early Kentucky furnituremaker. Shortly after returning to my hometown I began work on my studio, the structure of which is mortise-and-tenon, and in 1991 raised it with a crew of friends.  This building, with nails only in the siding and roof, a hammer-beam truss in the center, and scarf joints which turn shorter 8X8’s into rigid twenty-eight-feet-long beams is representative of my love of joinery. Now it’s too small, of course.

My furniture is mostly made to order of local hardwoods; influenced by Shaker, Queen Anne, early Kentucky pieces and the contemporary work of Krenov and Maloof. I strive for a style both simple and elegant; if modern then with a classic feel. Dovetail joinery is a favorite if mine, and I like to introduce curves and angles to give energy. In recent years I have participated in the invitational exhibit “Master CraftWorks: Kentucky” at the College of Mt. St. Joseph in Cincinnati, and in 2007 in the invitational for the Bourbon Ball in Louisville, for which I made a chest from staves of a former whiskey barrel. Artist and friend Gloria Thomas has called upon me several times to create cabinet-style frames for her paintings; the St. Bernard Abbey in Alabama has an altarpiece I built for her, as do several churches in Kentucky.

I transferred to Berea College in the 70’s and became a student of the late Rude Osolnik, renowned woodturner and a founder of KGAC, and then became a teaching assistant in his Crafts classes there. After several years of building custom furniture for a company in Lexington, I was accepted into KGAC in 1987. For the last decade in addition to working out of my own studio I have worked about a hundred days a year with George Neel at Antiques Restoration in Lexington.

The best way to own my work is to ask me to make it; I do consign work to the Artisan Center at Berea and have sold through the Museum of Art and Craft at Louisville, but supply is limited. Custom-made furniture requires a long lead time; I’d like to make more of what pleases me but making a living requires that I please you, the client. Contact me!