Shaping Possibility Crafting a Vision
Brinkley Furniture Brings Custom Designs to Life…
An easy riddle today: What do a 3D program, a computer-driven router and a small wood shop have in common? That, of course, would be Michael Brinkley, master woodworker of Brinkley Furniture in Redding. Brinkley crafts original tables and chairs and entertainment center shelves with cabinets—any furnishings, really, specifically designed for each individual taste.
To do this, Brinkley invites each customer into his shop, where they describe the furniture of their dreams. He adds dimension to their description, modeling it into a 3D mesh on his computer, which is connected to a router set to grind precision cuts into sheets of wood. He assembles these pieces with long-practiced hands, finishing with a wood oil wipe or a clear coat spray.
The customer being part of the process from inception is one reason Brinkley speaks as if each job is a team effort. “We build out of solid wood, which we locally source, and also some veneered plywood. We stay away from particle board that breaks down easily when it’s wet,” he says. “So our furniture is probably a little more expensive, but we have a good warranty and everything is handcrafted.”
Whatever the price, it doesn’t seem to cost him customers.
Los Angeles resident Mark Ortega hired Brinkley to help furnish his second home in Redding. “He’s just a pleasure to work with and kick around ideas and concepts,” Ortega says. “He draws on all that experience to help my wife and I make a decision as to the different looks and different types of wood and stains.
And he uses top-notch materials. We just love his work.”
All that experience began more than 30 years ago in Louisiana, when a family friend in construction offered him a position more enticing than his grocery bag boy job. Only 16 years old, Brinkley left school to build houses. He knew nothing about the trade, but over the years he grew into it, then beyond it. In the empty rooms he built, he imagined how he could fill them.
“I walked into a room that was just Sheetrock, just looked plain and void. But then as you start adding trim to it, it starts coming as its own character,” Brinkley says. “If I could build things like fireplace mantles and cabinets, then I could manipulate wood to work in any way that I could visualize. I knew one day I would actually create furniture from my thought process.”
He opened his own shop near the Alabama/Florida border. Within a few years, his work became recognized and he reached out to interior decorators in the Florida Panhandle to promote himself. “One of my clients had just built a home and we built him about a half a million dollars’ worth of furniture,” Brinkley recalls. “That was a pivotal point in my life.”
Another pivotal point in his life was his reunion with his first girlfriend. High school left behind, life pulled them in different directions, each into their own marriage, each later divorced. They reconnected across the country, talking back and forth between Florida and California. A few years ago he moved his life to Redding to be with her, now his fiance.
As he did in Florida, Brinkley reached out to team with interior designers in the region, including in San Francisco, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe and here in town. One in Redding, Dustyn Kellar, owner of Curated by Kellar Design, says what sets him apart from other local crafters for her is that he touches base.
“He’s more present. Michael invites me to his studio and he comes here,” she explains. “He’s on social media all the time. He remarks on my social media. He posts things about projects we worked on together. So I think because of that, it seems like more of a complimentary relationship than a one-way relationship.”
Brinkley says that’s another reason for the “we” in his vernacular. “I am the CEO of the company, and I do a lot of everything from the top down, the design the process, but we also collaborate with interior designers and upholsterers. So I like to say “we” as a team, because it’s more than just me.”
Looking ahead, Brinkley shares his latest creation, a chair inspired by Redding’s most revered landmark. “The shape is of the Sundial Bridge, the long, tall tower portion of it,” he says. “We’ve already got a prototype. We’ve sat in it. We’ve got a few customers interested, so we’re pretty much taking pre-orders for it now.”
Brinkley Furniture strives to meet a deadline of four or five weeks from the approval of a sketch to delivery of a custom, hand-built furnishing. Its owner emphasizes that if someone comes to him with no design at all, bringing him just an inkling of a vision, perhaps a few inspiration photos, he can draw it out for them, by hand or by computer, and show them a design they will love.
Their tag line: We didn’t invent furniture, we’ve just perfected it! •
Brinkley Furniture
3985 Eastside Road #7, Redding
(530) 972-5231
www.brinkleyfurniture.com
Find them on Facebook and Instagram
Curated by Kellar Design
1401 Market St., Redding
