Jere Osgood was a leading studio furni­ture maker and noted teacher of furni­ture and wood­work­ing. Born and Raised in Staten Island, NY, he studied archi­tec­ture at the Univer­sity of Illi­nois but left after two years to pursue furni­ture design and fabri­ca­tion. Enrolling in the School of Amer­i­can Crafts­man program at Rochester Insi­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, Jere studied with Tage Frid. In the sixties, Jere Osgood estab­lished his studio in New Milford, Connecti­cut where he made work, devel­oped a tech­nique for tapered, bent lami­na­tions and wrote several arti­cles about the process for Fine Wood­work­ing. In 1975, he began teach­ing in the Program in Arti­sanry at Boston Univer­sity, where he worked with Dan Jackson and Alphonse Mattia. The program, which even­tu­ally closed in 1985, was broadly influ­en­tial on the Amer­i­can studio furniture movement.

He is included in Speak­ing of Furni­ture: Conver­sa­tions with 14 Amer­i­can Masters by Bebe Pritam Johnson and Warren Eames Johnson,
with essays by Edward S. Cooke, Jr. and Roger Holmes. The Artist Book Foun­da­tion, New York, London, Hong Kong, 2013.

Jere Osgood contin­ued to make work from his studio in Wilton, New Hamp­shire until the end. He was an active member of the New Hamp­shire Furni­ture Masters Asso­ci­a­tion and the Furniture Society.

Jere passed away peace­fully on October 10, 2023 in Peter­bor­ough, NH.

Mr. Osgood was born in 1936 in Staten Island, NY

• 1960 – 61 Grad­u­ate study with Scan­di­na­vian Seminar in Denmark
• 1959 – 60 BFA in Furni­ture Design, School for Amer­i­can Crafts­men, Rochester Insti­tute of Technology
• 1955 – 57 Archi­tec­ture, Univer­sity of Illinois

• 1986— Work­shops: Peters Valley, Ander­son Ranch, Haystack Moun­tain School of Crafts, Penland School of Crafts
• 1985 Work­shop, Haystack Moun­tain School of Crafts
• 1975 – 85 Asso­ciate Profes­sor Wood­work­ing and Furni­ture Design, Program in Arti­sanry, Boston University
• 1982,83,84,86,88 Work­shop, Arrow­mont School of Crafts, TN
• 1981,84,85,88,89 Work­shop, Lami­na­tion, Brook­field Craft Center, Brook­field, CT
• 1981 Lecturer, San Diego State College, San Diego, CA
• 1980 – 91 Appointed Acting Direc­tor, Program in Arti­sanry, Boston Univer­sity, Boston, MA
• 1980 Panelist on Lami­na­tion at Wood 80 Confer­ence, Purchase, NY
• 1979 Work­shop, Frog Hollow Craft Center, VT
• Lecturer, Hayward Tech­ni­cal Insti­tute, Clyde, NC
• 1978,82,84,88 Work­shop, Ander­son Ranch, Aspen, CO
• 1977,79 Work­shop, Peters Valley, NJ
• 1977 Work­shop, New Hamp­shire League of Craftsmen
• Lecturer, Rhode Island School of Design
• 1975 Lecturer, Virginia Commonwealth University
• 1972 – 75 Assis­tant Profes­sor, Wood­work­ing and Furni­ture Design, RIT School for American Craftsmen
• 1970 – 72 Wood­work­ing and Furni­ture Design Spring Term 1971 and other lectures 1970 – 72, Philadel­phia College of Art
• 1967 – 70 Work­shops in Wood­work­ing, Brook­field Craft Center
• 1962 – 70 Wood­work­ing and Furni­ture Design, Craft Students League, NY

• 1980 National Endow­ment for the Arts, grant for study and contin­ued devel­op­ment of lamination processes.
• 1988 National Endow­ment for the Arts, grant for study and contin­ued devel­op­ment of lamination processes.
• 1993 Fellow of the Amer­i­can Craft Council
• 1996 Best in Show, New Hamp­shire Furni­ture Masters Association

• Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
• Amer­i­can Craft Museum
• Rochester Insti­tute of Technology
• The Johnson Collec­tion (Objects USA)
• Inter­viewed by Dr. Richard Polsky for the Amer­i­can Crafts Collec­tion of the Colum­bia Univer­sity Oral History Library
• Ronald & Anne Abram­son, Washington,DC

• Conway, Patri­cia, Art for Every­day, The New Craft Move­ment, Clark­son N. Potter, Inc., 1990
• Cooke, Edward S., Jr., New Amer­i­can Furni­ture: The Second Gener­a­tion of Studio Furni­ture­mak­ers, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989
• Mayer, Barbara, Contem­po­rary Amer­i­can Craft Art, 1988
• Dormer, Peter, The New Furni­ture, 1987
• Stone, Michael A., Contem­po­rary Amer­i­can Wood­work­ers, Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., 1986
• Mellach, Dona, Creat­ing Modern Furniture
• Mellach, Dona, Creat­ing Small Objects as Functional Sculpture
• Nord­ness, Lee, Object USA
• Pearson, Amer­i­can Crafts
• Taunton Press, Fine Wood­work­ing Techniques Three
• Taunton Press, Fine Wood­work­ing on Bending Wood

• 1998 ​“Editor’s Choice: Furni­ture with a Time­less Bent”, NEW ENGLAND CRAFTS CONNOIS­SEUR, Vol. 1, Issue 4, Spring
• 1997, 98 THREE CENTURIES OF NEW HAMP­SHIRE FURNI­TURE MAKING, NH Furni­ture Masters Asso­ci­a­tion Second & Third Annual Exhi­bi­tion & Auction
• 1985 ​“Perfect Sweep” by Rosanne Somer­son, AMER­I­CAN CRAFT MAGA­ZINE, June/​July

• 1979 ​“Bending Compound Curves”, July
• 1977 ​“Bent Lami­na­tions”, Spring
• 1976 ​“Tapered Lami­na­tions”, January