Douglas Green

Douglas Green has been a woodworker all his life -- it was his father's hobby, he grew up in a woodshop. At age six, his father built him his own workbench in a corner of his shop, and gave him his own set of tools -- real tools, not toys, sized for a boy's hands. "Now you don't have to borrow mine!"

Through schooling, through careers as a programmer in the days of mainframes and minicomputers, then as a secondary science teacher of chemistry, physics, and biology, woodworking was his escape, his reconnection to the past, his projections into the future, a physical expression of his creative talents. Practical, too! His workspace grew through the years, from a toolbox in the closet, to the modern fully equipped dream workshop he's had for 30 years.

Starting professionally in 1994 as a custom woodworker who could, and did, build anything for anybody, today Green  specializes in the ancient art of marquetry, the creation of pictures using different species of wood cut into veneers. He makes his own veneers, cutting trees into boards, or having them cut, then cutting boards into veneers, and veneers into marquetry. Each element in a  picture is a different piece of wood. Making his own veneers from scratch lets him use woods, such as tamarisk, plum, or apricot, that most people have never seen in veneer form.