Jerome Bias

Jerome Bias Is a furniture maker and cultural heritage practitioner, specializing in the reproduction of 18th and 19th century Southern furniture using period techniques. He has been making furniture since 2000 and was the joiner for Old Salem Museum & Gardens from 2011-2016.

Bias has been studying the work of Thomas Day for the last twenty years. He has presented for the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Winterthur Museum, and The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA).

Graduating from the MESDA Summer Institute program and serving as the joiner for Old Salem, Bias has learned to see the building of furniture from a material culture perspective. Who built it? What was their life like? Bias has also worked with the Slave Dwelling Project. As the hearth cook during on-site programs, he learned to ask complicated questions, like what were the skill sets of enslaved tradespeople? How did they craft lives for themselves and their families while enslaved?

Currently Bias currently makes reproductions of historic pieces of furniture from places through the country where his family was enslaved. Through this project he hopes to explore the question: how did his ancestors handle the trauma of enslavement and yet maintain the ability to have hope and love.