Twenty-two chapters

Find other makers. Locally. Where else?

There aren't many other people who hand-build American period furniture to exacting standards — their own. SAPFM chapters are how you can meet the ones near you. Each chapter meets as it can: in private shops, partner-guild facilities, museum back-of-house spaces. Twenty-two regional groups meet two to four times a year. All twenty-two are part of your membership.

Become a member See the twenty-two →

Master maker teaching at a chapter session

What it looks like

The shape of a chapter Saturday.

You drive in. There's coffee. Eight or fifteen members are unwrapping pieces from blanket-wrapped boards — show-and-tell is the standing opener at every chapter meeting in the country. Then the featured presentation: a member walking the room through his recent build, or a visiting instructor on a particular technique. Lunch — sandwiches, ten or fifteen dollars in. After lunch: a second presentation, a tour of the host's shop, a swap meet where members bring planes and chisels to sell or trade. Drive home around dinner.

A SAPFM chapter meeting in progress — presenter at front, members in folding chairs

The texture changes by chapter. Some host fifty members at a partner woodworking school's facility; others meet around a single workbench in someone's basement. SoCal does three-day workshops at Palomar College. Chesapeake and Delaware Valley have met jointly at Hearne Hardwoods every fall for the better part of a decade. Earlier this month, Ohio River Valley spent a Saturday at a member's Caldwell, Ohio shop on Revolutionary War campaign furniture.

A few moments from the last year

What that actually looks like in practice.

Nov 2025 SoCal — three-day Federal bedside table workshop with a Cartouche recipient. Hands-on veneering, inlay, tambour door, at Palomar College. After several quiet years, SoCal is now one of the most programmatically ambitious chapters in the Society.

Nov 2025 Peach State raised $1,220 for SAPFM national in a single meeting — a member's plan sales plus small-donation tools. First instance of a chapter raising significant funds for the parent organization rather than itself.

Fall 2025 New England formally split into Northern New England and Southern New England. The chapter had grown large enough to subdivide rather than consolidate. Members are encouraged to pick up to three home chapters; many in the region picked both.

Fall 2025 Two members began formalizing the SAPFM partnership with Winterthur — the Delaware museum that holds one of the great American period-furniture collections. The work is to turn occasional chapter visits into something standing: back-room access, curator engagement, more SAPFM members through the door more often.

Feb 2026 The founder of a New England woodworking school taught a 2-day skills demo at Peach State, and led Southern New England's tour of the Yale University Art Gallery the same month. The traveling-instructor pattern is now flowing toward chapters as readily as members travel out.

May 2026 Rock River Valley toured the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee — a private foundation that holds one of the most important American decorative-arts research collections in the country. The Foundation's executive director and chief curator personally led the tour. The kind of access a SAPFM chapter negotiates that an individual maker would struggle to alone.

The twenty-two

Coast to coast, all part of your membership.

Hover a star for the chapter name. Twenty-two stars, twenty-two chapters across the country.

Backcountry CarolinaNorth & South Carolina

Blue RidgeVirginia (Fredericksburg area)

CarolinasNorth & South Carolina

ChesapeakeMD · DC · Northern VA

Delaware River ValleyDE · PA · NJ

FloridaCentral FL · Tampa · St. Pete

GatewayMissouri · St. Louis

Great LakesMichigan · Ohio

Gulf StatesAlabama · Mississippi · Louisiana

IndianaIndiana · Noblesville & nearby

IroquoisUpstate New York

Lone StarTexas

MinnesotaMinnesota

Northern New EnglandMaine · New Hampshire · Vermont

Southern New EnglandMassachusetts · Connecticut · Rhode Island

North TexasDallas / Fort Worth area

Ohio River ValleyOhio · Kentucky · Columbus area

Peach StateGeorgia · Atlanta & nearby

Rock River ValleyIllinois · Wisconsin

San Francisco Bay AreaNorthern California

SoCalSouthern California · LA & San Diego

TidewaterHampton Roads · Coastal VA & NC

Upcoming meetings · sample

Where to walk in.

Sep 2026

Chesapeake · Fall meeting

The Woodworkers Club · Rockville, MD. The chapter's fall venue, alternating with Olde Mill Cabinet Shoppe in York PA each spring.

Sep 2026

Great Lakes Chapter · Working group session

Sunderland-Brown Woodworking Institute · Lake Forest, IL. The chapter's permanent home; multi-month cohort builds run here through the year.

Oct 2026

Peach State · Hand-tool demonstration

Atlanta-area host shop. Topic and presenter announced two weeks ahead by the chapter lead.

A guest's-eye view. Real chapter meetings post here as leads schedule them — find your chapter below to ask when the next one is.

How to visit a meeting

Show up. Decide later.

Pick the chapter closest to where you live. Email the chapter lead — addresses follow the pattern chapter-name@sapfm.org, e.g. peach-state@sapfm.org or chesapeake@sapfm.org. Say you're a maker thinking about joining and ask when the next meeting is.

Most chapters welcome a first-time guest before any membership decision. Show up with a piece of work to talk about, or just show up. Lunch is usually ten or fifteen dollars in. The membership pitch happens naturally over the day, or it doesn't. Either way you've spent a Saturday with people whose company you'll either want more of or won't.

The other people doing this. There aren't that many of them.

Find them.

Become a Member