When I was a child, I loved working with my hands. I always was tinkering with something, taking it apart or trying to put it back together,” said Mariah Wren. And now an adult, she is still working with her hands—now she designs and builds well-crafted furniture.
Mariah grew up in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. She was home-schooled, after which, she attended Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore where she studied sculpture. She then went to the renowned Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 2004 with a B.F.A. in furniture design. After graduation, she worked for a cabinetmaker for about one year. “I learned there,” she said. “But, it wasn’t what I wanted.” So, in 2006, she and her husband Mark Cooper founded Wren & Cooper Furnishings. Mariah is the woodworker and Mark handles aspect of the business and delivery. They set up their first shop in an old industrial building in Philasdelphia.
Last year, Wren & Cooper designed and built a workshop in Bucks County, located between Buckingham and Doylestown. “It’s so nice to have our shop right next door to our home,” Mariah said. “When I was young, I was home schooled. Now I’m home jobbed.”
Her new shop is airy, well lit and open. There are workbenches in several places. The shop is 1,000 square feet. “Although it’s not large, it’s big enough for our business,” she commented. Because of the way she set the shop up, it looks larger than its actual square footage. Many of the larger power tools are mounted on wheels. By doing this, she can move them out of the way when she doesn’t need them or move a tool to a more convenient location if it helps her. She noted, “This is a great help when I need room to assemble furniture or when I’m applying a finish.”
Her larger power tools include an 8-inch jointer, a 20-inch thickness planer, a 10-inch table saw, a 19-inch band saw, a drill press and a lathe. She has one special tool called a multi-router, which is mounted on a bench by itself. She uses it when she makes mortise and tenon joints. She commented, “This tool saves me a lot of time.” Since many of the joints she uses on her furniture are the classic traditional mortise and tenons, this is an important tool. She added, “Since I use so many of these joints, this tool literally saves me hours over hand-cutting every mortise, and the joints always are perfect.”
All of the power tools are set up so they can have a dust collector attached. On some, it’s permanent, while on many, the dust collector can be moved from tool to tool before it’s used, enabling her to move tools out of the way when she’s not using them.
As with any good woodworking shop, Mariah has many clamps of several styles and sizes. Plus she has and uses a vacuum bag. This implement is helpful when she wants to glue pieces of wood together. The parts to be glued are set up in the bag. Then, vacuum pressure is applied. Everything stays in place under “clamping” pressure until the glue has dried.
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