Jere Osgood was born in 1936 and raised in Staten Island, New York. He studied architecture at the University of Illinois but left after two years to pursue furniture design and fabrication. Thereafter, he enrolled at the School of American Craftsmen at Rochester Institute of Technology and learned furniture making under Tage Frid.[1] Osgood was also influenced by the work of Wharton Esherick.[2] He completed the four-year program in about two years,[citation needed] receiving his B.F.A. in 1960. He supported himself while in school by fabricating and selling small wood objects of his own design. Osgood was interested in the modern furniture being made in Scandinavia and studied in Denmark in 1960-1961.
Career
On his return to the United States, Osgood established a studio in New Milford, Connecticut, where he made small objects. In the late 1960s he began to make large projects and explored different techniques of laminating wood.[3][4] He published his explorations of lamination between 1977 and 1979 in Fine Woodworking magazine.
"Jere Osgood" in Edward S. Cooke Jr., Gerald W.R. Ward, and Kelly H L'Ecuyer, The Maker's Hand: American Studio Furniture, 1940-1990, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA, 2003.
"Jere Osgood" in Edward S. Cooke, Jr., New American Furniture: The Second Generation of Studio Furnituremakers, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA, 1989.
"Jere Osgood" in Michael A. Stone, Contemporary American Woodworkers, Gibbs M. Smith, Salt Lake City UT, 1986.