Meet Robert Bliss

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Robert Bliss a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Robert, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

The central ethos and animating spirit of Blissmade Furniture is ‘The Finest Kind’. It represents the highest form of good, in the Platonic sense, that is singular, perfect, eternal, and unknowable. As a designer and maker of furniture, this notion of an unknowable perfect version of an object is all consuming. I could make a different table everyday, for my entire life, and still never manifest that unknowable perfect table into existence. However, with sights aimed at that perfect form each time my sharpened edge touches the timber, I get closer and closer to that perfection with every version I produce.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Blissmade Furniture is a limited production maker of heirloom furniture and cabinetry in the mountains of New Hampshire. Our materials are solid hardwood timber harvested primarily from local sources in the Northeastern United States, which fortunately contain the most beautiful and desirable furniture making hardwoods available anywhere in the world. The furniture is constructed using traditional joinery, which when cut and fitted properly will outlast any modern fastening system. We use a combination of old and modern processes, some of our machines are the cutting edge of manufacturing technology, some are massively heavy machines from the 1930’s, and very often we use hand tools as has been done for thousands of years. The result of this work is a piece of furniture that embodies pragmatic sustainability.

The furniture is mostly made-to-order, you can find more information on the furniture and how to order at www.blissmadefurniture.com.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Passion – I have an absurd obsession with furniture, it occupies a borderline unhealthy proportion of my thoughts to the point where I frequently dream about it. We are surrounded by it all the time and it really defines our lives in many ways, if you were to switch out all the furniture in your house one day it would absolutely change the way you live your life, it is much more impactful than I think most people realize. I find that this kind of passion is foundational if you want to spend the rest of your life focusing on one thing, which I do recommend, to find one thing and spend the rest of your life trying to be the best in the world at that thing.

Human Interaction – Before making furniture, I worked for a handful of marketing agencies in experiential marketing and retail, studying how consumers interact with spaces and how designing those spaces in a particular way can impact those interactions, which can be useful if you want someone to buy it. When I think about a customers furniture, I also think a lot about how that furniture will be used and interacted with, I try to maximize the ergonomics of a design and insure that it will have utility for the longest possible period of time. Utility is critical, without utility, it ends up in a landfill.

Good Taste – Good furniture will always be good, and bad furniture will always bad. Understanding the difference is a simple matter of having good taste. I spend a significant amount of time looking through auction catalogs and books trying to find the finest possible examples of furniture and understand what makes a piece of furniture good or bad. I find that there are common design principles that are shared through thousands of years by the biggest names in furniture making. The aesthetic and proportion in my own designs are informed by those principles that transcend time and genre.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

I was a little over a decade into my humdrum suit-and-tie career when my middle child Caleb was born sick with a rare illness called myotubular myopathy. Caleb died at 5 months and 1 day old after battling the disease and it absolutely re-arranged the inner workings of my brain. I retuned home to NH with my family to try and regain some sort of footing. A week to the day after holding Caleb for the last time, my father asked me if I could pick up a range hood that he had made by a local furniture maker, I suspect he thought the wheel time would be good for me, and he was right.

I had known about Bill for a long time, my parents had a few pieces made by him in my childhood home that I grew up with, but I had never met the man until that day. I was in Bill’s shop for a few hours talking, he had lost his son Sam in the 80’s in a tragic accident on a frozen pond and he had all the wisdom to offer that you might expect out of a man who had been making furniture for 50 years. Bill asked if I wanted to spend a few weeks in the shop with him working, my only alternative option was sitting in a room and feeling bad for myself so I was quick to accept.

I ended up spending just over two years in the shop with Bill. I buried myself in work learning everything I could about making a living as a furniture maker. Bill is a fascinating character. He is a good furniture maker, but not great, in fact I am still not sure that he even enjoys it all that much. However, he is a remarkable businessman and has incredibly refined taste in art and furniture honed over decades of experience. He was able to prove that someone can emerge from tragedy and build a truly beautiful life for their family. His existence was all the proof I needed that I might be able to do the same.

Blissmade began a few hours after Bill turned to me one day in the shop and said, “You are the best furniture maker I’ve ever had in the shop, and maybe the best I’ve ever seen. You need to do something with this.” I purchased a house with a shop on the property a few miles up the road and partnered with Bill to form Blissmade which is now in its sixth year of operation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blissmadefurniture.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blissmadefurniture/