Andy Rawls - Back Down South

Photographed in Boerne, TX

Raised in:
Temple and Forth Worth, Texas

Lives in:
Boerne, Texas

How you got into building furniture:
I started building furniture with my dad as a teenager. Our first project was a workbench, which I still use in my shop today. Throughout college I built stuff, furniture for my room or a swing for the front porch. Towards the end of college, my dad and I took a brief furniture making course at Homestead Heritage School of Woodworking in Waco, which was a real eye opener for me. There was an old Engilsh man named Paul Sellers teaching the class and I can still remember being blown away by his skills. This experience pushed me in the direction for making traditional heirloom furniture. I took several more classes at the school and picked up the basics of furniture construction and hand tool use. Shortly after I graduated college I got accepted to be an apprentice under Brian Boggs in Kentucky. After I left his shop, I moved back to Texas where I ended up in Boerne after I met my wife. I worked for Brent Catterton for 3 years, mostly building custom front doors for some of the finer homes in the Hill Country. Now, I’m closing in on my first year of business in my own shop building mostly commissioned furniture for clients in the Hill Country area.

How Texas inspires your craft:
Brian Boggs encouraged me to find design inspiration from where I grew up, in Texas. It was several years later after I had left his shop that his advice really hit home. I ran across a book by Lon Taylor that showcased early Texas furniture. I never realized how much history there is with Texas furniture. There’s a strong influence of German craftsman who settled in Texas in the mid 1800’s and their work is very unique to the Texas culture. My ambitions are to re-create some of these older pieces that can really only be found in Texas Museums or as antiques hidden away somewhere. Theres’s a chair I’m hoping to bring to market this fall called the hide bottom chair, which was commonly found on Texas ranches in the 1800’s. The chairs construction comes from the common ladder back style of the east coast but uses cowhide for the seating.

Now would ya look at that:
Meet Andy Rawls, Fine Texas Woodcrafter. Andy specilizaes in “simple, functional furnture, crafted to last generations.” I had the pleasure of visiting his shop a few weeks ago and seeing his work first hand. His work blew me away, particularly his recently completed Texas Pecan king sleigh bed. Don’t let his Hill Country location stop you from checking out his work or commissioning him for a piece – he has built for clients throughout Texas and even shipped a peice to Pennsylvania.