about
PETER KORN is the founder of the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, a non-profit woodworking and design school in Rockport, Maine, where he served as Executive Director from 1993-2021. Born in Philadelphia, PA in 1951, Peter attended Germantown Friends School and majored in history at the University of Pennsylvania. He worked as a carpenter for two years following college, then embarked on a career as a self-employed furniture maker from 1974-1986, during which he served as Adjunct Associate Professor at Drexel University for five years. Immediately prior to founding the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Peter spent six years as Woodworking Program Director at Colorado’s Anderson Ranch Arts Center. His furniture has been exhibited nationally in galleries and museums.
Peter is the author of Why We Make Things and Why it Matters: The Education of a Craftsman (David R. Godine, Publisher, 2013). The book was honored with the 2014 Maine Literary Award. It is published in the UK by Random House and in translation in South Korea. Reviews and more can be found here. The central tenet of Why We Make Things is that craftsmanship is more than a set of skills; through the process of creating an object, we transform ourselves.
How-to books by Peter include the best-selling Woodworking Basics: Mastering the Essentials of Craftsmanship (Taunton Press, 2003) and The Woodworker's Guide to Hand Tools (Taunton Press, 1998). Translations of the former have also been published in China and South Korea.
Currently, Peter designs furniture for production, and teaches occasional workshops at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. To see a short documentary about Peter by British filmmaker Ben Spilling, click here.