Society of American Period Furniture Makers
The Annual Conference · October 2–5, 2026

Connecticut River Valley.
Yale to Providence.

Four days in October: the Yale Furniture Study on the Friday, two days of presentations at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking in Manchester, the Cartouche Award Banquet, and a Monday in Providence at the Stanley Weiss Collection and the John Brown House. The 2026 conference has come and gone. Here is what it was.

Read the full 2026 program The year before: Williamsburg →
This year

October 2–5, 2026.
Manchester, Connecticut.

Tim Killen, the 2026 SAPFM Cartouche Award recipient, holding a Windsor chair he built, in his workshop.
Tim Killen · 2026 Cartouche In his shop, with a Windsor chair of his own making.

The 2026 Annual Conference brought 80 registrants and their guests to Manchester, hosted by Bob Van Dyke and the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. Both optional tours filled: the Friday at the Yale Furniture Study and Yale University Art Gallery with the Yale curatorial staff, and the full Monday in Providence.

The weekend's presenters:

  • Steve Latta — furniture maker, educator, and longtime Fine Woodworking contributor, known for Federal inlay
  • Bill Pavlak — Master Cabinetmaker at Colonial Williamsburg
  • Steve Brown — longtime Cabinet & Furniture Making instructor at the North Bennet Street School
  • Martin O'Brien — Winston-Salem, NC cabinetmaker and conservator, with extensive work on the MESDA collection
  • Joan Parcher — historic hardware expert, identifying, restoring, and even casting brass hardware for period furniture
  • Alyce Perry Englund — Decorative Arts Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a leading authority on American japanned furniture
  • Bob Behnke — Technical Service Manager at Franklin Adhesives, makers of Titebond

Friday evening's Cartouche Award dinner at the historic Webb-Deane-Stevens House & Barn in Wethersfield honored the 2026 recipient, Tim Killen.

Two optional trips bracketed the weekend — the Friday at the Yale Furniture Study and Yale University Art Gallery, and the full Monday in Providence at the Stanley Weiss Collection and the John Brown House. Both ran full.
WhenOctober 2–5, 2026
Yale on the Friday, Providence on the Monday
WhereCT Valley School of Woodworking
Manchester, CT
Registrants80
and their guests
HonoreeTim Killen
2026 Cartouche recipient
How it went

Friday to Monday.

Fri · Oct 2 The Yale Furniture Study and the Yale University Art Gallery by day, led by the Yale curatorial staff. In the evening the Cartouche Award Banquet at the historic Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum, with a presentation by 2026 honoree Tim Killen.
Sat · Oct 3 A full day at the school — Steve Brown on getting the most from a museum measuring trip, rotating small-group sessions with Steve Latta, Bill Pavlak, and Martin O'Brien, and Joan Parcher on period brass hardware.
Sun · Oct 4 Alyce Perry Englund of the Metropolitan Museum on American japanned furniture, Bob Behnke on the science of adhesives, and Steve Latta closing on a Federal-style card table.
Mon · Oct 5 Providence — the Stanley Weiss Collection and the John Brown House, both private, for fifty members. The conference's last word.
Full 2026 program, presenters & prices
The John Brown House, Providence, Rhode Island — a brick Georgian mansion, now a museum of the Rhode Island Historical Society.
Providence, the last day. The John Brown House and the Stanley Weiss Collection — the optional Monday trip. Photo: Filetime, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The year before

Williamsburg
October 10–13, 2025.

The 2025 Annual Conference brought 86 registrants to the Williamsburg Lodge for four days of presentations, behind-the-scenes museum access, and the Cartouche Award banquet honoring Bess Naylor — recognized for her work on Pennsylvania furniture and Line and Berry decoration.

Friday's behind-the-scenes program took members into the Anthony Hay Cabinetmakers' Shop and the Booker Tenement with Bill Pavlak and Brian Weldy, the Colonial Williamsburg storage labs with curators Tara Chicirda, Chris Swan, and Sarah Towers, and the Geddy Foundry for a private demonstration of 18th-century hardware casting and engraving.

Saturday rotations ran in three 90-minute sessions across upholstery, tall case clocks, and the Walker tea-table fusion project — Mike Mascelli, Jason Bennett, Ray Journigan — with Bob Van Dyke on Federal-period ladies' work tables. Sunday opened with Bess Naylor's talk and continued into Don Williams on aging finishes, Tad Fallon on traditional water gilding, and Curtis Buchanan on the Democratic Chair.

Friday and Monday optional tours took small groups to a James River plantation with Ralph Harvard and Chipstone furniture editor Luke Beckerdite, and to Historic Shirley and Berkeley Plantation on the Monday — Shirley's three-story flying walnut staircase is the only one of its kind in America.

Read the full 2025 program →

Manchester, Connecticut. October 2026.

See you next year.

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