For Eric Burdge, the owner of DRH Furniture LLC, the name itself holds traces of the past. DRH stands for “Dr. Hodge,” a childhood nickname that stuck, and today, it represents dedication to old-world craftsmanship and building furniture the right way.

Eric officially started his business just 12 days after earning his master’s degree in furniture making. “I didn’t intend to start a furniture-making company. I just really wanted to be as good as I could possibly be at building things.” With traditional apprenticeships largely gone, he first attended the American College of the Building Arts, then earned a degree from New England Institute of Technology, and completed his training at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, America’s oldest trade school.

All told, it took 9½ years of study and apprenticing under seasoned artisans before he filed his LLC.

As master craftsman of DRH Furniture, he specializes in 17th- and 18th-century style furniture, “the furniture-making style just before the Industrial Revolution.” That means traditional joinery: mortise and tenon, dovetails, and fully handmade construction. Everything is custom. “I always just tell people, I’ll build you anything, including a six-foot-tall purple egg with a dent in it if you want to call that a chair. All I care about is that it’s built as well as it could be.”

His work unites historical technique and creative vision: “I will build you anything from a Queen Anne tallboy dresser to a 60x60 Manhattan table with no seams or edges”. DRH also offers wooden furniture repairs. For instance, DRH will restore treasured pieces like “great grandma’s rocking chair that no one had been able to sit in for 20 years.”

DRH is a one-man, one-dog shop. Eric always works alongside Herman, a Chocolate Lab mutt and “employee of the month for 77 months now.” Eric explains, “I will be the person coming to your house, measuring it, creating a design, consulting, fabricating, finishing, and delivering.” That hands-on approach ensures quality from start to finish.

Eric is currently excited about a striking, one-of-a-kind project: a harvested Black Walnut root ball paired with nearly two-inch-thick bookmatched slabs, designed to look as though “a tree is growing out of your living room.” It’s unique and intentionally so. Eric rarely creates non-commissioned pieces, but “it [the root ball] was just really too cool to turn down or throw away.”

Outside the shop, Eric volunteers at the Dorset Playhouse building scenery, where he enjoys returning to his theater roots. He also serves as a Dorset volunteer firefighter and instructs with the JISP program on Tuesdays. Owning his business “gives me a lot of freedom to make it to the kids’ events”, he says. 

He and his wife, Amanda, owner of Creative Solutions Bookkeeping, live in East Dorset with their children, Michael and Adalyn.

When asked for advice, Eric returns to the theme of quality: “It’s always cheaper to fix something correctly the first time. And never, ever use Gorilla Glue on any woodworking project.” 

In an era when skilled trades are declining, “we can currently replace about one in every seven skilled tradespeople that will retire this year”, DRH Furniture stands as a solid testament to craftsmanship, patience, and building pieces to last.

 

DRH Furniture

148 village St

East Dorset, VT

908-601-1316