K eith Griffith does his best work with Jack Johnson songs playing in the background.

He’s tried rock and roll, pop and even jazz, but nothing gets his creative juices flowing quite like Johnson’s relaxed, folk tunes.

Griffith, 53, of Amherst, had the music playing Tuesday as he gave the grand tour of his Manchester mill studio, saying that, like the music, his life and career have become more laid back – on most days anyway – since starting a new, more creative business venture last
fall.

A former financial director of a $13 billion company who lived in New Hampshire, Texas and Switzerland all within a 10-year period, Griffith left his corporate job about five years ago after growing tired of firing people.

Today, he spends his days in the Wuambec Mills overlooking the Merrimack River making Shaker boxes, a traditional oval wooden box made by hand for centuries by the Shakers and now popular as decorative and functional home decor.

His business, All Things Shaker, has been growing in popularity and is gaining customers all the time.

“The work is better with the view,” he said Tuesday, standing by one of three large windows in his studio, surrounded by boxes of all sizes.

Griffith said he never planned on making woodworking a career, but needed a life change after leaving his job.

He’d spent months looking for a job similar to the one he left, but kept making it to a final interview before being turned down, Griffith said.

Hoping to find what was holding him back, he hired a career coach.

It was that coach, he said, who told him what he already knew, but needed to hear from someone
else.

“He said, ‘People are seeing something you’re not … It seems like you don’t want to be here’,” Griffith said. “He was right.”

Still, it was a unique Christmas gift from his wife, Marcia, that inspired his current career.

In 2007, during his unemployment, she gave him and his now 18-year-old son a father-son box-making class in Canterbury Shaker Village. Griffith said he visited the village before and was interested in the art form.

After taking the class, that interest grew.

He started making his own boxes at home, and began giving them as gifts to family and friends.

When friends asked him for two large orders to give to their corporate clients as Christmas gifts, Griffith said he realized he could turn his new hobby into a business.

In September, he moved his work out of his Amherst home – to save his family from the sawdust piling up – and into the Wuambec Mills, where he works five days a week.

His shop is filled with boxes he’s made. Some are for sale, others are failed attempts at a new technique.

He spends hours each day in the studio, boiling thin sheets of wood, bending them around pre-made forms and then nailing them together with traditional brass tacks.

Business is still growing, Griffith said, with many online orders coming in and some retail sales as well, but most months he breaks even.

It’s caused some stress in his life after years of being used to living comfortably on his corporate salary, and some friends and family do have a hard time understanding why he’d want to make wooden boxes for a living, he said,

But his wife and children are supportive, he said, and realize he is much happier and more involved in the family in his new venture.

“I didn’t spend a lot of time with my kids when they were younger; I was a workaholic,” he said. “Life can still be hectic and there’s still stress … There’s always days when things just don’t bend right. But I’m a better person to be around now.”

Griffith said he is always learning more about the art that is making Shaker boxes and learning how to better run his business. He hopes by next year he’ll not only continue to love his new career, but also be a little more financially secure.

Still, he said that while growing his business is important, he always tries to focus on the quality of his work, like the Shakers
did.

“They believed their work was a direct example of their belief in God,” Griffith said. “It was simple, but of really high quality. I try to have the same focus, on making as quality of a good as possible.”

For more information on All Things Shaker or to view goods for sale, visit www.allthingsshaker.com.

Danielle Curtis can be reached at 594-6557 or dcurtis@nashuatelegraph.com. Also follow Curtis on Twitter (Telegraph_DC).