Bess Naylor

The Society of American Period Furniture Makers named Bess Naylor of York, Pennsylvania its 2025 Cartouche Award recipient—the first woman to receive it. Her interest in the craft began in childhood; by about age eleven she was helping her mother and grandmother refinish old furniture. A career in science and medicine followed, but a deepening fascination with historic paints, glues, and finishes—approached from a chemist’s side—eventually brought her full circle. She left medicine to commit fully to woodworking.

She honed her carving under Andrew Marlow, then founded Olde Mill Cabinet Shoppe in 1982—at once a reproduction bench and a source for the imported, hard-to-find supplies of the finisher’s trade. Teaching became central early on: beginning with a seminar by George Frank, she spent four decades making Olde Mill a place makers came to learn, hosting workshops led by craftsmen such as Toshio Odate, Steve Latta, and Frank Klausz.

A defining chapter was her eighteen-year partnership with her late mentor, Gene Landon. The two traveled to study original museum pieces firsthand, turning measurements and photographs into accurate working plans—in all, she has vetted and taught well over a hundred objects. With Landon she co-authored “Carving a Philadelphia Ball and Claw Foot” for the first volume of American Period Furniture, and she holds Affiliate Researcher status at Winterthur Museum, studying the working methods of eighteenth-century makers.

From Christopher Storb’s letter of recommendation:

It has been during my time spent with Bess in her shop, with her students, and surrounded by Bess’ furniture making that I came to appreciate her enormous impact on the field. … I have watched her build outstanding recreations of eighteenth-century furniture. I am particularly jealous of her work employing line and dot / line and berry inlay on her reproductions of our favorite local eighteenth-century inlaid furniture tradition.