Matt Cooper

Matt has been on site and in the shop for over fifteen years now. He started out with an Art Degree, in photography, from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Rather than parlay that into a lucrative career in the studio, he instead became more interested in working with his hands and actually making things. 

Matt was living in his home town of Portland, Oregon at the peak of a real estate boom there, and was lucky to be able to take advantage of the attendant surge in remodeling and home renovation that goes along with increased home values. Turning to a contractor friend in 1994 who was looking to expand his operations, Matt began learning the trades. After several years of demo, framing, electrical, plumbing, tile-setting, roofing and finish carpentry, he began gradually to turn his efforts towards shop work exclusively. He enrolled in a two-year Mastery Program at the Northwest Woodworking Studio in Portland, Oregon, studying under Gary Rogowski.  There he learned not only technique, but also a method, a way of using sharp edges and a careful eye to produce fine and well-made furniture pieces. This knowledge manifested itself in a series of private commissions for clients in Portland and elsewhere in the country. His work is now in homes on both coasts and in Italy, and Matt continues to take on custom furniture work.

In 2004, Matt and his wife, Minnie, moved from Portland to the Finger Lakes region of New York, settling in West Danby in an pre-Civil War house in the middle of the hamlet. Over the course of the next three years, they built an 1800 sq. ft. shop behind the house, thus giving him as short a commute as anyone could reasonably ask for. It wasn't long after settling here that he started up a friendship and then a partnership with Tod, and now the two of them work together on a wide variety of woodworking projects.

Tod Sukontarak

Tod's involvement in woodworking started with an interest in lutherie (guitar making) after moving to West Danby in 2000.   He had been an active, Ithaca area mandolin player who wanted to start building instruments.  That led to four different, month-long, guitar making workshops studying with George Morris at Vermont Instruments in Post Mills, Vt. In order to build high-quality guitars, Tod felt he needed to work with wood more regularly and was offered a position building custom cabinets with Ben Boynton at the Red Barn Cabinet Shop in Slaterville Springs, NY.  He worked there for 3 1/2 years before teaming up with Matt to form West Danby Woodworks.  Tod enjoys and appreciates being able to earn a living woodworking and cabinet making but he still plans to build guitars and other stringed instruments as a hobby.  He feels fortunate to have his work influenced by his close associations with George, Ben and Matt.