My background is Industrial Design and for over thirty years I have designed and developed new products. Tupperware, Oneida, Sunbeam, Cutco to name a few along with dozens of other home and safety related products.
In 2013 I was approached by the Darwin Martin House, a Frank Lloyd Wright historic site here in Buffalo, NY to come up with a new product idea for their gift shop. The niche I focused on that I felt was underserved was the garden and that is when I designed my first bird feeder based on Wright’s “Tree of Life” window design which is used throughout the Martin House.
This led me to becoming an official licensee of the Frank Lloyd Foundation for six years, which led to more feeder designs based on FLW windows. I wholesaled FLWF licensed products all over the country to Wright sites, museum shops, catalogs, and retails shops.
I decided in 2019 to no longer be a FLWF licensee but instead develop my own original window designs for the handmade feeders I continue to build and sell through my Etsy shop.
Our feeders are built from Marine Grade Plywood, which is tough stuff and very stable, MGP processes so efficiently there is very little scrap produced. Fast growing, renewable Philippine Mahogany has been used for years in boat building. Frank Lloyd Wright specified MGP for the cabinetry at Fallingwater in Pennsylvania due to the dampness of the location deep in the woods straddling the Bear Run Creek.