Like other aspects of interior design, custom furniture and cabinetry occur on a spectrum. There are terrific bespoke examples made by thoughtful craftsmen, and then, there are not-so-good ones. Rook Fine Furniture, founded by three craftsmen—Ken Stahl, Cory Herweck and Shawn Hoven—falls under the former category. They boast a passion for elevating furniture design and construction that zeros in on the nitty gritty details while producing work that runs the gamut of all kinds of fine furniture to custom kitchen cabinetry and other built-ins.
“There weren’t a lot of other shops in town that did everything,” says Stahl. “Some did custom furniture, others did cabinets, but never both. We want to be a one-stop shop for all the above.” Custom furniture can be a choose-your-own-adventure, especially when it comes to selecting your own fabric for an existing chair frame or developing plans for built-in shelves. What wood should you choose? What style? What design? Luckily, the team at Rook can answer all these questions and more, helping clients navigate the design and production process—to end up with a personalized piece customers will cherish for decades to come.
Case in point, the team recently made a bedroom set that included a custom bed frame, vanity and bookshelves they then transported down to Dallas. “The pieces were all white oak, which is a very popular material right now,” says Herweck. Each of the pieces boasted hallmarks of the team’s fine craftsmanship: clean lines, consistent grain work and smooth edging. “It was a great project to hang our hat on.”
To become experts in their field, Stahl and Herweck sharpened their expertise in some of the most respected woodworking shops in the state. In fact, both men met at another shop where they were working together and decided to team up to join forces and pool together their creativity and varied skillsets. “I was a contractor for a long time,” says Stahl, who then went on to study furniture making in Maine. Herweck, on the other hand, had worked in the nonprofit sector and then decided to branch out into woodworking before eventually meeting up with Stahl. Together, they have been working on creating personalized pieces of furniture and custom cabinetry for a year.
Typically, the team is contacted by designers, but they do work with customers directly and approach each project with the same excitement as they did their first. “We really focus on creating high-end custom work,” says Stahl. “We want to bring a level of attention to it we weren’t seeing done elsewhere.”
