“The Doerr Woodworking Shop…a place where the soul of the tree meets the spirit of the craftsman.”

--Michael Doerr

“Hands of a Carpenter”

(1,000 Words)

(Published in the Door County Advocate, a Gannett publication, on April 5, 2006)

A flair for design flows through the veins of the Doerr family, like electricity through a circuit. A talent for designing electric motors inspired Lee Doerr and his brothers, Emmett and Ed, to found Doerr Electric in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, during the 1940’s; it later expanded to Sturgeon Bay in the 1960’s. One might have expected Mike Doerr to pursue a career in the electrical design field like his father (Ed) and uncles, but Mike’s designing creativity led him in a different direction. Mike traded ohms and amps for awls and adzes about twenty years ago and is now internationally regarded as a master craftsman of hand-carved furniture.

Doerr, fifty-three, was born and raised in Milwaukee and attended Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. He visited Door County for forty-five summers before relocating to this area several years ago. His wife, Bobbi, works at Door County Market and his daughter, Lydia, is a freshman at UW-Oshkosh.

Doerr first carved his love affair with wood as an apprentice wooden shipwright under the tutelage of Ferdinand Nimphius in Neshkoro, Wisconsin. “A friend of mine was working there, at the time,” Doerr said. “I was coming out of college, and he convinced me that I should come over and talk with Ferd and get a job. So, I did. My friend told me that it was like putting a puzzle together, but you get to change the parts.” Doerr eventually used these “parts” to construct 40’-60’ sailboats.

Doerr prefers to work with hardwoods, especially black walnut because “it’s pretty and it works well.” Black walnut also adapts well to most home decors. Doerr has created over 600 pieces of furniture, so far. Each piece is unique: signed, numbered, and awaiting copyrights. From credenzas and cabinets to simple benches with handles, Doerr’s expertise and creativity are a joy to behold.

“My designs are fairly contemporary,” Doerr said. He has always designed his own furniture--either as studio samples, client commissions, or as teaching tools for woodworking classes that he offers. Several craftsmen and artists have influenced Doerr’s designs, besides Nimphius. Sam Maloof taught Doerr some of the construction techniques that he, himself, employed in his seventy-year career; Maloof’s trademark is evident in the joinery of Doerr’s work.

A client once asked him to design a chair that did not look like one of Sam Maloof’s spindle back rockers “After a while of thinking, it dawned on me that I could actually trace my wife’s torso,” he said. Bobbi’s back eventually became the template for a Doerr rocker with soft, feminine curves. In fact, many of Doerr’s chairs are recognizable by designs that contour the wood to the body (giving hardwood a comfortable feel), by his tendency to work with continuous straight lines of construction, and by repetitive grain patterns that blend in attractive ways.

“I base my business on my chairs,” Doerr said. “There are only a handful of woodworkers in the United States who make hardwood seat chairs by hand. Chairs are hard—they’re hard to build, they’re hard to make comfortable, and they’re hard to make aesthetically pleasing to the eye.”

Hard or not, Doerr has built a reputation for himself with his designs, and his “Number One Chair” is an apt title for the first chair that he ever designed. Each Number One Chair evolves from thirteen pieces of wood that fit together to form a cube, much like puzzle pieces form a picture. “Once you have the cube, you can go anywhere you want, as long as the curves fit inside the blocks,” Doerr said. Built of northern hardwoods, this chair has a low back and long seat and is characterized by a “hard line.” The hard line refers to a technique that makes the chair’s profile flow in a continuous line, like a pencil sketch. Roundovers are the curved parts of the seat and arms. The overall design of this chair gives it a spatial, symmetrical look and feel. As a finishing touch, Doerr hand rubs each chair with a combination of linseed oil, tongue oil, and urethane varnish.

These polished, completed pieces require thought and hard work, however, and Doerr admits to making some mistakes. He is then reminded of one of Nimphius’s philosophies: “It’s not what you accomplish in a day but what you have learned.”

Doerr has taken this advice from his mentor to heart. “There are no mistakes—only learning experiences,” he adds. “Once you figure out that your mistakes are learning experiences, it’s a much friendlier environment.” Doerr has spent many hours creating his designs, nestled in his workshop in the woods near Idlewild. Now, he has a young apprentice of his own: Justin Vought.

Vought helps Doerr build prototypes of his designs, which he brings to furniture shows around the country. This spring, he plans to exhibit his work in Philadelphia and New York City. Customers may order reproductions of his originals at these shows.

Doerr’s workshop also serves as a classroom several times a year when he offers a five-day woodworking course on the fine art of constructing his new Number One Chair. In addition to his workshop classes, Doerr has also conducted one-day woodworking seminars at Peninsula Art School in Fish Creek. His next scheduled five-day class takes place in June at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking in Manchester, Connecticut. In September, he plans an eight-week course in chair construction at the Penland School of Craft in Penland, North Carolina.

These days, Doerr enjoys mentoring as much as he enjoys creating new pieces of furniture. In fact, he has written and submitted two articles that Woodshop News recently accepted. He concedes, however, that teaching and building are “two different thrills.” Experiencing Doerr’s work is a thrill, in itself, and it is obvious that he is both an artist and a skilled craftsman.

The Doerr Woodworking Shop is located at 4371 Co. M in Sturgeon Bay and is open by appointment, only. For more information, call (920) 743-5631, visit http://www.michaeldoerr.com/ or e-mail michael@michaeldoerr.com