Artisan Brenda Hall brings out the best in her woods

SHARON — For 20 years, while living in her native Portland, Ore., Brenda Hall had a day job as a furniture refinisher. But in the evenings, she followed her dreams: She designed and built her own furniture. Hall said she has been entranced with woodworking since she was a child. “It’s my passion.” At a certain point, she said, “I realized I had to give up my day job and devote myself fulltime to doing what is important to me: designing and building functional art furniture.” Hall moved to Sharon eight years ago from Portland with her partner, Tina Lebeda, and her son, who is now 15. And, naturally, she built most of the cabinets and built-in pieces in her new home.She particularly likes to work with “sculpted pieces of wood, discarded things which can be brought back to life, and anything organic.”On the exterior of her home, for example, is a handrail on the porch steps that includes pieces of an old tree. A wine storage rack sits on legs made from knobby tree parts. She doesn’t want her pieces to look as though they were made from straight-forward milled lumber, she said.Hall recently returned from a trip back to Portland, and one of the souvenirs of the trip is a slice of wood, about one yard by one foot, from an old tree that had belonged to her uncle. “I’ve admired that piece of wood for many years. My uncle finally gave it to me.” She and her son and partner fit it into their car and drove it back to Sharon, in four 16-hour driving days. Now it will stay in her workshop until Hall determines what will be the best use for it.Eventually, she hopes to have a showroom for her work. For now, she is getting assignments through word of mouth. She recently completed an order from the Trinity Conference Center in West Cornwall to build a number of desks for a conference room.The one thing she is most proud of, Hall said, is that she is entirely self-taught in woodworking and furniture refinishing. “Most woodworkers I’ve met on the East Coast are from ‘schools,’” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with that; I’ve even taught classes of my own. But I enjoy knowing I learned my trade by myself over more than 20 years of hands-on experience.” For more information, contact Hall by email at hnlwoodworking@gmail.com or go online to www.facebook.com/hnlwoodworking.