I'm Andrew Schatz. Atlas Wood Company is me, in an attached two-car garage in eastern Pennsylvania, making hardwood frames one at a time. This fall I lose one of the bays so my wife Kate can finally park her car inside. That's about the size of the operation.

I taught myself to work with wood. The long way: through mistakes, then better mistakes, then the ones I don't make anymore. But somebody taught me how to work in general, well before wood was involved, and two things they said have stayed with me. There's always a way. Nothing is impossible. And: If you do it right, you'll never have to explain yourself.

Those two lines are the whole standard. When a customer comes to me with a piece and no product photo on my page quite fits, we find a way. A rush build over a weekend so a Christmas gift arrived in time. A non-standard size. A custom depth for a canvas someone's grandmother stretched by hand in 1948. The answer is almost always yes, and if it isn't, I say so straight. When a frame leaves the shop, it's because I'd hang it in my own house. Not because the deadline was tight or the wood was close enough.

Every frame gets wrapped in craft paper, hand-folded at the ends like a gift. I've done that for every single order. The box arrives at somebody's door with a small piece of care in it before the frame is even out of the wrapping. That matters to me. I don't outsource it, I don't rush it, and I don't skip it when I'm behind.

Most of the frames I build are for something that mattered a lot to somebody. A painting from a relative who's no longer here. A photograph from a day that only happened once. A record someone played until they wore through the grooves. I make the thing that holds the thing that matters. That's the whole job.

If you have a question about a piece, a wood, a size, or whether I can do something I don't have listed, email me. I'll answer.

Thanks for stopping by.

Andrew