Recreating Greene & Greene
James Ipekjian has built a career on reproducing
furniture designed by Charles and Henry Greene.
J
ames Ipekjian didn’t set out to become an exper t on reproducing
the early 20th-century furniture designed by architects Charles
and Henry Greene, and he can’t really explain how he got to be where
he is today.
"If there were a contest for the luckiest woodworker on the planet"
he says, "I don’t know if I’d win – but I think I’d be one of the fi nalists."
Today, he works alone in a comfortably cluttered but remarkably
well-equipped shop located near the ultimate bungalows built by
the Greenes in Pasadena, Calif. In the 1970s, Ipekjian was working as
a model maker in the aerospace industry, and building projects from
Popular Mechanics out of plywood in his garage. Bitten by the wood-
working bug, he wondered if he could possibly make a living working
with wood. A commission for an 18 th - centur y highboy, as well as dis-
satisfaction with his job, led him to give it a try.
Working fi rst in his garage, and later in a rented storefront, Ipe-
kjian did all the work that came his way: kitchen cabinets, remodeling
jobs and the occasional antique repair. His story isn’t that different
from a lot of woodworkers – except that some of the remodeling and
repair work was on original Greene and Greene houses and furniture.
Ipekjian had the drive to get the details exactly right, and the quality
and range of his work since then has attracted attention worldwide.
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