Making a name - and fine furniture

CORNWALL — Two years ago, Timothy Riccucci found what he thought was a great job working for a custom cabinetmaker in Cornwall Bridge. He was fresh out of a job at the Hitchcock Chair Company factory, and had graduated from Oliver Wolcott Technical School not long before.

But soon after he started at his new job, the FBI came looking for his boss (who has since left the country).

“I was lucky that the owner of the building agreed to rent it to me. Some of my boss’s customers stayed with me,� Riccucci said during a recent interview in the Route 7 shop that now bears his name. He uses his first and middle name, calling it Timothy David Furniture Company.

The 25-year-old Torrington resident designs and builds all kinds of furniture. He has fostered a name for himself with pieces carried in stores in towns such as Kent, New Haven and Hudson, N.Y.

Through contacts he has made at the shop in Cornwall, he has even fostered business in New York City.

Word-of-mouth has quickly taken him far.

He stays busy, and is looking forward to a better economy that will see him getting beyond just paying the bills.

“I’ll make anything anyone wants,� he said. “That’s the way you get the business. But you have to be accurate, and sometimes with very little to go on.�

On a shop table is a print of an e-mail of a drawing of a table. The only other information he was given was the dimensions.

“I’ve even gotten a photo from a Pottery Barn catalog and was asked to make the same thing — but better.�

He has built large, complicated decks at places such as Ralph Lauren’s Katonah, N.Y., home.

In his showroom, a few traditional pieces, such as a detailed china cabinet, are mixed in with the cleaner, more modern lines of his own designs. A large round table, with an inlaid lazy Susan, is a testament to his craftsmanship. It sits flush with the tabletop and spins effortlessly.

Other pieces feature striking mixes of various woods, “live� edges (slabs with the natural contours just under the bark left intact), salvaged wood and modern mixed with rustic.

A table made from a slab of maple cut at ground level features an intricate inlaid design. Riccucci explained that he designed it to fill a rotted portion of the slab. Other pieces have splits through the wood that Riccucci artfully strengthens with “wooden Bandaids,� which is what he calls butterflies. “The older guys call it a Dutchman,� he noted.

Timothy David Furniture Co. is located at 240 Kent Road (Route 7). Walk-ins are welcome and the shop is open most days. Riccucci can be reached at 860-619-8138.