My name is Robert LeHay, and I make Shaker-style boxes by hand in a small shop at my home in Embden, Maine. It’s a quiet place: woods, dirt roads, and few distractions. I’ve been doing this work since 1993, though the path that led here started long before that.

I grew up building houses with my parents and brother, living in the lower half of one while we finished the top, then selling it and moving on to the next. My grandparents were in the antiques business that whole time, and I tagged along to auctions with them from the time I was small. When my brother joined the Navy the house building came to an end, and my parents got into antiques as well. Some kids might have grumbled about weekends spent at auctions and yard sales, but I enjoyed every bit of it. There’s something satisfying about uncovering a piece that was used and cared for over many years, something built by hand and made to last.

After serving in the Army, I came back to Maine and started helping my parents build Shaker-style furniture. In 1993 I visited Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village and learned to make Shaker boxes. It’s the last active Shaker community in the country, and it’s right here in Maine. I’ve been at it ever since.

For years my boxes were carried by museum shops and catalog companies, and pieces found their way overseas. These days I sell my work directly through this website, and it’s just me in the shop. Every box starts as a log. I buy them through local woodsmen here in Maine, and a third-generation sawyer mills them right on my property. After that every step is mine: the pine dries in my own kiln, and I plane and cut every board to size myself. The wood is maple, birch, ash, and quartersawn Eastern white pine. Handling every step from the log on is how I know the quality is right from the start.

From there the box itself comes together: swallowtail joints cut one at a time, copper tacks made on original 19th-century machines, and finishes of milk paint, natural dye, and pure tung oil that only improve with age. No automation, no assembly line, just small-batch work done start to finish by one set of hands.

Many of my customers are antique collectors, needleworkers, quilters, and other craftspeople — folks who appreciate the feel of something real, not manufactured, and the care that goes into a piece made one at a time. These boxes have always been tools, used for sewing supplies, recipes, and the like, but they carry a simple, enduring beauty too.