Guides to Commissioning Custom Work

All guides

• Can you legally commission a reproduction of a famous furniture design?

  In the United States, usually yes, with real limits. The overall shape of a piece of furniture is generally not protected by copyright, and any design patent on a design from before 1980 expired decades ago. What is still protected is the name. Commissioning a maker to build a table in the manner of a mid-century designer is a different act from selling that table as that designer's work, and the second one is where the legal exposure lives.

• Commissioning a church altar: what the Church actually requires

  For a Catholic parish the short answer is that a fixed altar does not have to be stone. Built of Living Stones, the US bishops' document on art, architecture, and worship, states that materials other than natural stone are permitted for a fixed altar provided they are worthy, solid, properly constructed, and subject to the further judgment of the local ordinary. Wood and metal altars are possible, and your diocesan bishop decides. Get that judgment before you commission, not after.

• Gustav Stickley vs L. & J.G. Stickley: what you are actually asking for

  There were several Stickley brothers and at least two furniture companies that matter. Gustav Stickley ran the Craftsman workshops and published The Craftsman magazine; his mark is a joiner's compass enclosing the motto Als ik kan. L. & J.G. Stickley was his brothers Leopold and John George's company, which marketed early work as "The Onondaga Shops," took over Gustav's workshops in 1918, and is still in business today reissuing his original designs. If you are commissioning a piece, which one you mean changes the proportions, the detailing, and sometimes the price by a factor of ten.

• How commissioning custom furniture works, start to finish

  Commissioning is a conversation that ends in an object. You describe what you need, a maker asks questions and quotes, you agree on design and price, you pay a deposit, they build it over the following two to six months, and it is delivered and installed. The whole process runs eight to twenty-four weeks for most pieces. The part buyers underestimate is the front end: the clearer your brief, the faster and cheaper everything after it gets.

• How much of your money stays local when you buy from a local furniture maker

  Research compiled by the American Independent Business Alliance, averaging a series of studies by the firm Civic Economics, found that 52.9 percent of each dollar spent at a local independent business recirculates locally, against 13.6 percent at a chain. That is roughly a four-to-one difference. Commissioning furniture from an independent maker sits at the strong end of that range, because there is no imported inventory in the transaction: the money goes to a person's labor, to materials, and to a shop that is physically in your area.

• How to write a commission brief, with a fill-in template

  A commission brief is one page that tells a maker what you want, where it goes, how it will be used, what you can spend, and when you need it. Makers quote faster and more accurately from a written brief than from a conversation, and the quality of the brief is the single biggest thing you control in the whole process. The template at the bottom takes about twenty minutes to fill in.

• Licensed reissue, authorized reproduction, or "in the style of": what the words mean

  Four terms get used interchangeably in furniture listings and they mean four different things. "Vintage original" means made in the period by the original manufacturer. "Licensed reissue" means made today by the rights holder or its licensee. "Reproduction" or "replica" means made by someone else, with no rights involved, and the terms carry no legal weight at all. "In the style of" or "inspired by" means an interpretation that does not claim to be a copy. Price, provenance, and legal risk all differ sharply across the four.

• Traditional anniversary gifts by year, and what to commission for each

  The year-by-material list most people know was formalized in Emily Post's Etiquette in 1922, which set out materials for each of the first fifteen years and then every fifth year after. Paper at one, wood at five, tin at ten, crystal at fifteen, china at twenty, silver at twenty-five, gold at fifty. The custom itself is older, with roots in Central Europe and a Victorian habit of matching milestone anniversaries to materials.

• What custom furniture actually costs

  Most commissioned pieces fall between $500 and $10,000, with a median around $2,500. Trade and contract projects, where a designer or business is furnishing a whole space, run much higher and reach roughly $150,000. Those figures come from actual commissions on Maker Marketplace rather than from a price list, which is why they are wider than most published estimates.

• Where to buy a custom Aron Kodesh (Torah ark) and bimah

  Congregations commission these. A few manufacturers sell catalog arks, and they are a reasonable choice for a small or temporary space, but a permanent ark is built for one sanctuary: your wall, your ceiling height, your number of scrolls, your congregation's practice. The work goes to a furniture maker or cabinetmaker, usually with a carver, sometimes with a metalsmith and a textile artist. Budget six to twelve months from first brief to dedication.

• Where to buy a custom ceremonial gavel and sounding block

  A custom gavel comes from a woodturner. It is one of the few commissioned ceremonial objects that is genuinely affordable, because it is a turning job rather than a fabrication job, and one of the few a maker can produce in two to six weeks. Courts, boards, city councils, lodges, professional associations, student governments, and universities order them as investiture gifts, retirement gifts, and outgoing-officer gifts.

• Where to buy a custom ceremonial mace for commencement

  You do not buy a ceremonial mace. You commission one. There is no retail channel for university maces because no two institutions want the same object: the head carries your seal, your founding date, and your symbols. Most American universities commission theirs from an individual artist or from a small team of a metalsmith and a woodworker, and the commission typically runs one to two academic terms from first conversation to first procession.

• Where to buy custom liturgical furnishings

  Congregations commission these rather than buy them off a shelf, and for good reason: the objects have to fit a specific building, serve a specific rite, and satisfy a specific approving authority. The makers are furniture makers, carvers, metalsmiths, silversmiths, stone carvers, and textile artists. The usual sequence is committee brief, then diocesan or board approval, then a four to nine month build.

• Where to buy custom Nakashima-style live edge furniture

  Commission it from an American furniture maker who works in slabs. Cost is driven more by the slab than by the labor, which is unusual for a commission and worth understanding before you start. One thing to be clear about first: George Nakashima Woodworkers still exists. The New Hope, Pennsylvania studio is owned and operated by the family, with his daughter Mira Nakashima as Creative Director and president, and it continues to produce his designs. If you want an actual Nakashima, that is where it comes from.

• Where to buy custom Stickley-style Mission furniture

  You commission it. Original Gustav Stickley pieces are collectors' items sold at auction, and the L. & J.G. Stickley company still produces reissues of the original designs, but neither route gets you a piece built to your dimensions. For that you hire a furniture maker who works in quartersawn white oak and knows how to cut a through tenon. Costs sit in the ordinary range for commissioned furniture, with quartersawn oak, fuming and hand-forged hardware pushing toward the upper end.

• Why buy American-made furniture in 2026

  The honest answer is that three of the usual arguments got stronger this year and one got weaker. Tariffs have closed much of the price gap that made imported furniture the default. Domestic solid wood furniture sidesteps the composite-panel formaldehyde question entirely rather than relying on import paperwork. And a piece built by an identifiable person in your own country is a piece you can have repaired. The argument that got weaker is the environmental one, which is real but more complicated than most marketing admits.

• Wood species guide for commissioning

  For most furniture the honest shortlist is five species: white oak, walnut, cherry, hard maple, and ash. They cover nearly every combination of hardness, color, price, and availability an American maker will suggest. The right answer depends far more on how the piece will be used and what the room looks like than on any ranking of "best" wood.