The pieces of fine furniture
turned out by McSwain's Hand-
made Furniture in Mint Hill
the
last half-century are a testament not only to the McSwain family's skill but to their customer's imaginations.
The custom-made chairs, tables, beds and cabinets are a result of close collaboration, says Mike McSwain, 64, who
in 2005 turned over the presidency of the business to his son, Eric, 37. "In building a bed for them (customers) to sleep in the rest of their lives, we sort of develop a personal relationship with customers -- from New York to
Hawaii -- bring their ideas, and sometimes even their wood, to the business at 8608 Lawyers Road begun in 1960 by the late Eulan McSwain, Mike's father.
There the McSwains tell them what can and cannot be done and give them two-dimensional drawings of their ideas and samples of wood finishes.
Clients respond with an active interest, sometimes coming by during the building process to take pictures. "We have had the pleasure of working with three generations of McSwain's, " says Esten Mason of Charlotte. Eulan built dining room chairs for the Masons, Mike
made a lowboy and Eric made a chest of drawers. "Their work is exceptional," Mason says.
Mike McSwain, an admirer of the crafstmanship in antiques, likes to emulate those long-ago masters. "How did those guys do that, working by candlelight?" He mused recently while looking at a picture of a Chippendale-style dressing table made in Philadelphia.
"That's where we want to go with what we do, " he says
Reproductions and Originals
Though the McSwains are known for their 18-century reproductions, they also build modern furniture like gaming tables and entertainment centers for flat-screen TVs. "We're not above making money," Mike laughs. They also do antiques restoration.
Always, they and the other skilled woodworkers who work in the shop hew to the standards and even the methods of that earlier era. They use only solid wood , even in the backs of cabinets and drawer bottoms. Everything is hand-mortised and tenoned. "Every drawer is hand-dovetailed," Mike McSwain says.
At any given time, there may be 3,000 to 10,000 board feet of lumber air-drying at the McSwains' shop. They carve bedposts out of solid blocks of wood four to five inches thick, and Mike says: "The only way we're going to get it is to go out there and get it sawed. We essentially have it harvested for us specifically." They air-dry it themselves, a process that can take up to five years for walnut, 18 to 24 months for maple.
The McSwains, who also buy from lumber companies, most often use mahogany, walnut, cherry, maple, heart pine and black locust. Sometimes customers will see an exotic wood they like while traveling and have it shipped, as was the case with a South American wood the McSwains turned into a queen-size, French-style bed.
The former station manager of a Charlotte TV station found the doors from an 1890 horse-drawn hearse, complete with manufacturing number, stored in his Cabbarrus County barn. "We made a really neat cabinet out of those doors," Mike McSwain recalls. Funereal-looking carved black "drapes" hang over the front of the piece, which serves as a wet bar.
Family Heirlooms of Crafted Wood
Often, when a stack of lumber carries a special meaning for a family, it ends up as mementos and gifts.
A Mallard Creek landowner harvested the walnut trees off his property and had the McSwains build a dining table and chairs for him, plus a desk for his daughter and another for his grandson.
Doors from the Morrison mansion on the late Gov. Cameron Morrison's 3,000 acre SouthPark-area farm became coffee tables for family members.
This past Christmas, two Charlotteans received matching yellow and heart-pine cupboards made from boards salvaged from the 1794 Byrd Murphy House in Union County, SC. Their mother, owner of the house, had the McSwains turn the boards into simple styled china cabinets with wavy, antique looking glass.
And, of course, there's Mike's favorite: a simple pine hunt board made from the doors of a log cabin where one longtime customer was born. She drove to Mint Hill from Kentucky with the doors in the back of a pickup truck so that the McSwains could build a gift for her daughter.She was able to say to her daughter, "Look what I did, " Mike remembers. "It was great. It was wonderful. A lot of people got to feel good about that."
Having a piece of furniture custom made takes an average of six months and some pieces have taken up to a year. Cost varies according to complexity. Chairs can cost anywhere from $1,000.00 to $4,000.00, and beds range from $2,500.00 to $17,000. A recently built china cabinet with a top wreathed in hand-carved dogwood blossoms, a tribute to the artistry of longtime employee Ryan Navey, cost $12,000.00.
The McSwains continue to refine their work, Mike says. "Anybody can build a box and put hardward on it. Where you get into skills and artistic ability, that's how you separate yourself from everybody else."
Long time customer Esten Mason agrees. Of the pieces the McSwains have made for her over the years, she says, "Each pieces is a work of art."
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