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Vermont Magazine (Jan/Feb 2005)
Story by Karl Decker
It’s 6 in the evening. Mike Fontaine just home from work as a kitchen designer at a local lumberyard, leans back for a few moments of rest in his easy chair in the living room of his Brookline home. Two year old Justin is curled into his dad’s lap watching the red light pulsate on his dad’s beeper; 11-year-old Josh sprawls on the floor working on fractions. The back door opens. Dorothy, wife and mom, is home from another long day at the local convalescent home.
“Ever since I was in high school, I dreamed of having a family business. On that my sons would share with me, learn, and take over,” says Mike. Justin slips down to the floor and races into the kitchen. “The chance came to buy the Vermont Snowshoe Furniture Company, and -- well, two Novembers ago, I bought it. Just when the Christmas rush came!” The company’s history goes back to 1840 when William Tubbs -still a big name in snowshoes- first made the famously popular bentwood ash snowshoes and skis. Tubbs began a snowshoe-furniture line in 1928. Mike has given the business and the craft a new home in the weathered wood workshop-barn he and his father share just steps from both of their houses.
Josh comes in and says dinner’s ready. Mike’s beeper goes off. He listens a moment. “Not our call,” he says. Mike’s an emergency-care assistant and fire department vice-president at the Newbrook Fire Department in Newfane. At dinner, Dorothy nods toward the computer screen on the desk. “I’ve got that lacing pattern for the loveseat worked out,” she says. Josh will print it up-after his homework is done.
It’s just another day in the life of a small Vermont, family-based company that produces quality furniture from native wood. One day, you might be ordering your snowshoe rocker or coffee table or armchair from the next generation of Fontaines doing the lacing work.
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