Matthew James Designs

Built from the ground up….
It started in the Spring of 2011, an idea, an opportunity, life having me in the right place at the right time. An inquiry to have an acrylic chuppah made stared an adventure that has turned into something I never could have imaged. From a basement and a one car garage, to a storage locker, then 2 and 3…a contractors lot, a big barn, a small retail store ..the journey has been exciting. Now, 11 years later , working from a pair of large home based shops, we are selling acrylic nation wide and growing every year.
I’m fully self taught and learned the art of crafting acrylic the hard way and have grown into being able to do it with better tooling, better processes and better quality. Much of the work is still of the hand crafted nature, but nothing is mass produced or imported. It’s all made from my shop in NJ and made available to everyone. We can custom size most any design we offer and the quality will always be top notch, but please do not try and compare our standards to that of factory made pieces. If you can appreciate the “hand crafted” American made nature of your pieces, then we can surely make something beautiful for you.
While most of our designs do come out clean and very visually pleasing, please do note that especially on close inspection, minor imperfections and sometimes flaws may be visible on our pieces. Please review some of those below if you are concerned about possible visual issues.

Waterfall style pieces : The process of folding the smooth “waterfall” style edges, requires slow heating the acrylic to about 400, then hand folding it. The near liquid acrylic will sometimes dry with folds or ceases in the seam. In shop conditions, varying daily temps makes it impossible to heat and cool each piece perfectly, but we do it really well. This is purely a visual thing and will never “get bigger” or affect the integrity of the acrylic.

TABLE LENGTHS- BOWING : In table or shelf designs with longer lengths, bowing or sagging in the middle can be an issue. Normally on unsupported designs longer than 50+ inches . Please contact us for ideas and suggestions to help with longer designs

GLUE SEAMS: We hand weld each seam and clamp it to air dry. The process creates strong, reliable seals but on some edges, corners and on thicker piece, you may see some small bubbles or imperfections on the glue seams. Material ¾” or thicker can have more visual effects than thinner material but it will be visible to some extent in most pieces. We polish and glaze all our edges and seams to create solid, reliable seals that will last. Each, hand crafted, individually made piece will have it’s own unique features.

Shipping damage: While we strive to pack all of our shipped pieces well and use only quality couriers to deliver pieces with “White Glove” service sometimes with acrylic “ship happens” and damage occurs. If a piece get’s damaged in transit it will be replaced, refunds due to shipping damage are only offered if the shipping company honors the damage claim, this is not always guaranteed. In the case of shipping/transit damage, contact us at once and we will discuss the best resolution to fix the problem.

Please know we will always work with you to try and resolve problems. Please respect that we are God fearing, hard working American Folk trying to make each day a little better for those around us. We look forward to working with you and invite you to contact us anytime with questions or concerns on any of our pieces.
Matthew James