Mark Sfirri

Mark Sfirri received his BFA and MFA in furniture design at Rhode Island School of Design. He is primarily a furniture maker and sculptor working in wood but is also a teacher, researcher, writer, collaborator, photographer, and printmaker. His specialty is multi-axis spindle turning, an area that he has been exploring since the early 1990s. He has lectured and demonstrated his techniques throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. His work is included in the permanent collection of twenty- eight public institutions including the Renwick Gallery, Yale Art Gallery, Museum of Art & Design, Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the James A. Michener Art Museum, among others.

Sfirri is professor emeritus at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania where he ran the Fine Woodworking Program from 1981 to 2017. He has received three national awards: the “Distinguished Educator Award” in 2010 from the Renwick Alliance and, in 2012, the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Collectors of Wood Art, and this

year he is the recipient of the prestigious "2024 AAW POP Merit Award."

Sfirri has collaborated with numerous artists since 1985. He was a founding organizer of the Echo Lake collaborative annual conferences that began in 1999 at Bucks County Community College. Faculty, staff, students, and outside artists from around the world have participated over the years. This years conference is their 25th!

Sfirri had two solo museum exhibitions in 2024-2025. La Famiglia was held at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and The Flower Show was held at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

He has been researching Wharton Esherick, founder of the studio furniture movement in the US, since 2006 and has authored or co-authored eight articles about Esherick. He served on the curatorial team for Wharton Esherick and the Birth of the American Modern, an exhibition and symposium held at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011. He was co- curator of Daring Design: The Impact of Three Women on Wharton Esherick’s Craft at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown PA in 2021. He has lectured about Esherick throughout the US.

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