MH native opens new furniture studio offering exclusive
pieces
When lifelong Morgan Hill resident Todd Plummer started college, he was unsure of what career path to take.
But after attending a trade school in Sweden to learn a different style of woodworking and finish his degree, the 26 year-old has skills few people in the United States can claim.
The school, Capella-Gården, is located on the island of Öland, in the Baltic Sea, just off the southeast coast of Sweden.
It’s in Vickleby, a small town of 300 that is secluded from the rest of the population. Vickleby is 45 minutes away from the nearest cities — Kalmar and Färjestaden, which combined have just 30,000 people at most, Plummer said.
CapellaGården teaches woodworking, horticulture, ceramics and textiles, houses all of its 60-70 students and grows all of its own food, according to Plummer. And, woodworking students are required to chop down trees for their wood supply as well as make their own tools, which includes molding the steel for their chisels, he said.
“It was quite surprising wandering around Sweden and people ask ‘What are you here for?’ ” Plummer said. “I said ‘I go to CapellaGården.’ Everybody was like ‘Oh, wow. That’s pretty prestigious.’ ”
CapellaGården opened in 1962 after famous furniture designer Carl Malmsten purchased an old farm and made changes to accommodate his school.
The well-known European school, which teaches an “old-fashioned” style of wood building, is considered the best establishment to attend in Europe for anyone who wants to get a journeyman certificate in woodworking.
There isn’t a school in the United States that teaches what CapellaGården does, Plummer said.
In fact, there isn’t such a thing as a journeyman certificate for woodworking in the U.S., which is exactly what Plummer earned while in Sweden. With a Gesälbrev — a journeyman certificate — from CapellaGården, it’s easily to find a job in Europe, he said, although you’re lucky to find someone in the U.S. who even knows what it is.
After Plummer came back from Sweden, his mother, Linda, said she could see a noticeable difference in his work.
“He’s very focused on beautiful designs, aware of how woods work together and how they compliment each other,” Linda said. “(He’s) very in tune to functional uses, very stylized, very clean.”
One of Plummer’s chairs, called a Stadshus Stolen, or “City Hall chair,” took him three months to make. The chair includes a seat that took a week to weave. Plummer also used his own unique ingredient on the chair, staining the wood with expresso.
“Coffee’s big over there,” he said. “(The chair) is something unique.”
Plummer said the education he got in Sweden is hard to get anywhere.
“It’s very exclusive,” he said. “When I went to Sweden, they concentrated more on the skill of using your hands. There’s a lot more skill involved (than what I learned here).”
Plummer said the school’s techniques use so much of a person’s hand skill and pay so much attention to detail that no machine in any mass production furniture factory can duplicate the work.
While taking tours of different woodworking facilities in Calif-ornia, Plummer noticed that each one had four or five chisels at most.
“I thought, ‘Boy, that really won’t cut it,’ ” he said. “That won’t work in Swedish techniques.”
In Plummer’s studio there are various chisels, wood shavers and other tools he uses. All are hand made, and all are used often he said. There are more than a dozen, if not more.
“You can spit out a dozen (pieces) for a tenth of the cost (in a factory),” Plummer said. “When you make it by hand, it takes a lot longer, it takes a little more love going into the piece, the design and into the craftsmanship.”
A 1995 Live Oak graduate, Plummer said he always liked working with his hands and knew since he was young that he wanted to be some sort of artist.
His mother said his talent was apparent in his childhood.
“When he was young he did some very involved skateboard ramps,” Linda said. “They were build well beyond any specifications that might have been needed. He’s always enjoyed that kind of thing, he’s always shown a very fit interest in doing things with his hands.”
Plummer initially attended CapellaGården for one term in 2001 as a foreign exchange student while finishing up his degree after a SDSU professor suggested he think about studying abroad.
Plummer said he was so impressed with the school and knew it had so much more to offer that he had yet to learn that he decided to go back.
Plummer spent most of 2003 at Capella-Gården earning his journeyman certificate.
Since his return home, Plummer has set up a furniture studio in his parent’s barn and has opened for business. He has already sold many small pieces, such as chairs.
But Plummer’s most prized piece is a cabinet that would sell in the range of $10,000, he said.
“(The price) all depends on the design and how much work you put into it,” he said. “I’d really hesitate on trying to categorize (most pieces) into a price range.”
The cabinet, which was Plummer’s test to earn his journeyman certificate, scored a 4.67 on a scale of a five and took a year to make.
Although some of his work tends to be more expensive than what you would find in your average furniture store, Plummer said work like his is original, very unique and much more detailed than stock furniture.
Although he’s just getting started in the business, Plummer said he wouldn’t mind teaching a shop class in high school sometime down the road,
But whatever the future holds for him, bets are it will be with wood.
“There’s something about the feel of working with wood,” he said, “and being able to construct furniture or just about anything out of wood that appeals to me.”
Plummer’s studio is located at 2105 Diana Ave. in Morgan Hill. Details: call (408) 779-0064 or e-mail to h2*****@ya***.com
