When Hyattsville native Blake Sloane left to attend Binghamton University in upstate New York, he fully intended to study music and one day work in Hollywood, scoring, arranging and assembling pieces to produce something greater than the sum of its parts. Along the way, though, he found something he loved just as much as music: woodworking.
Today, Sloane is the owner of Forty Third Place, a small woodworking studio that produces small everyday pieces, such as trays and wall art, as well as larger items like dining tables, chairs, built-in cabinetry and bath vanities. He is also known for indulging whimsical and unconventional customer requests — a live-edge bar top or wood mosaic feature walls, for example — that help spaces feel special.
This is why Nicole Tysvaer, co-founder and CEO of Symbi Homes in Cabin John (and prior co-owner of the now-shuttered Hyattsville-based remodeling company Galaxy Homes), is a frequent collaborator with Sloane.
“I absolutely love Blake’s pieces,” said Tysvaer, who has commissioned the craftsman no fewer than six times. “He’s a very talented artist and craftsperson with a wonderful design eye and great attention to detail. I also appreciate that Blake prioritizes sustainability; he has used reclaimed wood materials on most of our projects.”
[ Related: Click here to see a tour of Sloane’s workshop]
Forty Third Place is a small woodworking studio that produces anything in wood, including dining tables, chairs, built-in cabinetry and bath vanities. Images: Courtesy Forty Third Place
Sloane’s woodworking journey largely happened by accident, though its foundation was laid many years ago.
“I went through the tech program at [Eleanor Roosevelt High School], and we had some really great shop classes there, so that kind of started it,” he said. “Even before that, my dad used to refinish furniture and was into collecting antiques and stuff, so I’ve always used my hands.”
Sloane said his old Nicholson Street childhood neighborhood was a hotbed for contractors, makers and tinkerers, which played a role in his development. “When we were living here, there was my dad’s good buddy Ralph, who was a contractor, and next door to him this guy Bob was a contractor, and Jim on the corner was a mechanic,” he said. “Everyone was real hands-on with everything all the time, you know, so it was kind of that growing up around everyone helping each other out with their projects.”
After graduating from Binghamton University in 2003, Sloane moved to Chicago to pursue his music career and to start a rock and roll band with his friends. Chicago, they felt, would be less competitive and friendlier than New York. For the next eight years, he played in two bands — Great Perhaps and Pool of Frogs — all over the city and even did some small tours.
At the suggestion of a friend, Sloane started volunteering at a building materials resource center, not unlike Community Forklift. In a matter of weeks, the center created a position for Sloane to help start a shop training program for formerly incarcerated people. Participants salvaged wood from old houses and buildings and then took the boards back to the warehouse to prepare them for reuse. “Then we started making stuff out of the wood,” said Sloane, who added that the effort slowly became a robust business with paying jobs through restaurants and other partnerships.
Blake Sloane uses many types of wood to create custom and unconventional requests, such as this decorative wall panel. Image: Courtesy Forty Third Place
During his time in Chicago, Sloane was visiting Maryland over Thanksgiving break in 2005 when he met Jonaki Sanyal, the woman who would eventually become his future collaborator at Forty Third Place. “We hit it off immediately and did the long-distance thing until she graduated [University of Maryland], and came to live with me in Chicago the following year,” he said.
Sloane and Sanyal eventually married and had a baby girl, Winona, who turns 12 this month. (They also have a son, Otis, 9.) The couple moved back to Hyattsville a year after Winona was born so they could be near family.
“When we were talking about moving here, it was kind of like, ‘Oh man, I’ve got my dream job here [in Chicago]. How can I bring it back?’” he said. “We had been doing more and more custom stuff in the shop, and I was running it, so I was like, ‘Why don’t I just bring that back here,’ and it just kind of evolved on its own.”
The couple bought a “grimy” little fixer-upper around the corner from his parents and began the renovation process. It was during the course of this rehab that he started building and crafting items for the house. “I was working on my own house and just kind of slowly started doing little things here and there first for friends,” he said. Word of mouth led to commissions, and a local listserv was also a great source of clients.
Early on in the formation of the company, Sloane made small decorative items and household products that he sold at festivals and craft shows. Images: Courtesy Forty Third Place
Sloane said the early iteration of Forty Third Place was a collaboration between him and Sanyal, centered around documenting the renovation. “Jonaki did all the photography, video and social media for us,” the studio’s website states. “We ripped out walls together, removed and installed flooring, painted everything, all while she was working part time at Chelsea School. She then helped transition us from doing that into more custom work, and small products sales through stores and fairs.”
Early on, Sloane made small decorative items and household products. For a couple of years, he sold items at Hyattsville Arts & Ales festivals and Mount Rainier craft fairs and through Washington metro area West Elm stores. “That was a really great way to meet people and get the word out there, but in terms of the margins selling little stuff and trying to keep up with that, it just didn’t really work out,” he said.
Today, the studio’s work is split between custom work with designers and commissions for private clients. “I’ve really lucked into some great relationships with designers and probably 80% or more of my work is directly through designers that I’ve been working with a lot,” he said. “There’s not as much client interaction for me.”
Sloane prefers working on pieces himself. He occasionally takes on an assistant, but he mostly toils away in his small basement shop alone with his music.
Though Sloane never quite made it to La La Land to become the next Danny Elfman or Mark Mothersbaugh, he still gets to do something he loves and realizes that woodworking is, in some ways, similar to working on music production: You have to assemble different parts to make a single, big thing. “I love doing them both.”
Sloane made this dining table out of black walnut slabs that came from a storm- fallen tree in western Maryland. Image: Courtesy Forty Third Place