Makers Gotta Make: Bolster Furniture Company

Monday, November 09, 2015

Portland Made Contributing Writer Peggy Acott, GoLocalPDX Contributor

When it was time to select a name for his business, Jamison Sellers decided on Bolster. “As a verb, bolster means to shore up, prop up, support…what furniture is designed for.”

Sellers didn’t start out thinking he would become a furniture maker. When he entered the Rhode Island School of Design it was with the idea of being an architect. Then he saw the presentation by the furniture design department and everything changed. “I realized what I really wanted was to use my hands and make things.”

In 2012, a friend suggested that Sellers come to Portland and split a small warehouse he had just moved his metal shop into. The timing couldn’t have been better: Sellers was ready to leave New England, and already had his sights set on Portland; not only because of the vibrant maker community and general appreciation for handmade goods that existed here, but also because he would have access to mountains and wilderness just outside the city.

He said from the moment he arrived “it felt like home.”

Sellers’s designs are clean, uncluttered. He likes “letting the material speak for itself.” As a self-proclaimed perfectionist, he is meticulous about every detail. Much of his work is in butcher-block pattern. In some, pieces are cut midway on the diagonal and all pieced together to create an intricate, colorful palate with the diagonals creating a subtle interior pattern. The result is rich and multilayered. There is a huge variety of color and visual texture that can be achieved with only one kind of wood. “It all depends where it comes from on the tree,” explained Sellers, “and how it’s cut in relation to the grain.” It is startling to see how many different colors and shades and patterns can exist in a tabletop made of for example, a single maple tree.

Sellers is committed to using reclaimed wood as much as possible, and he says that is part of the value of being on the west coast, where there is an awareness and effort to salvage and repurpose wood that would otherwise just end up in the landfill. The lowly pallet, for example: Sellers says it’s amazing what valuable and sometime exotic woods get turned into pallets. And over the years he has developed a keen eye for recognizing woods disguised in an unfinished, rough pallet. One advantage to him doing the pieced, butcher-block designs is that almost nothing goes to waste.

In the last couple years, Sellers has seen a growth in appreciation of good design and quality craftsmanship, and he likes the idea that he might be contributing to the creative culture of Portland.

In the spring of 2014, Sellers set up a communal wood and metal shop in a large warehouse in SE Portland to share with a handful of fellow makers who were also having trouble finding workspace in the face of redevelopment and rising rents. For the future, he’s aiming to open an attached gallery space to showcase the work of all the shop members, with rotating group and solo shows when possible.

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Portland Made is a digital storytelling platform and advocacy center for Portland's Maker Movement. We do 2 features a month on Portland Makers; connect makers with more local, national and international markets; connect makers with local professional and manufacturing resources; advocate for makers with politicians at all levels of government; work with PSU on an annual survey that captures the economic power of the Maker Movement; help makers find real estate; and promote Portland makers with local and national media.