If you’ve ever built furniture, whether you’re an accomplished carpenter or just someone putting together an IKEA haul, you know that quiet thrill you feel when two pieces come together perfectly: it’s almost as if you can hear the satisfying “click” as they slide into place. It’s a moment that Jen Levin, owner of Chilton Furniture, experienced when she first visited the renovated nineteenth-century warehouse space on Commercial Street in Portland that now houses Chilton Furniture’s new showroom. “We came in here and said, ‘This is perfect,’” she says. “It seemed uniquely suited to our furniture, which tells that same story of keeping history and reinterpreting it.”

Chilton was already a storied New England brand when Levin first learned about them. “My husband and I lived in New York,” she recalls. “I had been an attorney for several years, and my husband was in finance, and we were raising our three daughters. We were on a ski trip when I thought, ‘You know, I really miss New England.’” She continues, “I grew up in New Hampshire, went to school in Maine, and my grandparents owned a place in Ocean Park. I had this connection to Maine already. Long story short, after discussing with my husband, I Googled businesses to buy in Maine, and this one came up on the first page.” Chilton’s owner had inherited the business from his father, but his children were not interested in taking it over. It was the perfect opportunity for Levin and her husband, who bought the company in 2014 and moved to Maine a year later. Chilton had already evolved from its beginnings as a paint store after the previous owner noticed that the unfinished furniture he was using to demonstrate his paint colors sold better than the paint itself. But Levin had bigger ideas about new directions for the company. “I had a slightly different vision. I wanted original design. I wanted to find a designer to create a line of furniture that would keep the history of what we were, which was much more traditional, but have a modern spin on it,” she says. Recently, independent furniture designer Adam Rogers has been working with Chilton to shift the company’s offerings. As Levin puts it, “What we’re doing now is our modern take on traditional New England furniture, which is heavily Shaker influenced but very much our own.”

While Chilton already had showrooms in both Freeport and Scarborough, Levin wanted a spot in Portland to showcase the furniture maker’s  newest designs. “When we saw this space, we thought, what a great blend of history and a modern atmosphere,” says Levin. She continues, “It’s an 1860s building, the Thomas Block building, and these are all Maine-sourced bricks. The stringers above us are red oak. They were floated down the Fore River and sawn right here on-site. The space was used as a warehouse for food wholesalers and paper manufacturers, which is a common story in these parts. It was renovated in the early 1980s, I think.” 

The plain brick walls of the space provide the perfect neutral backdrop for the gleaming tones of the wood furniture throughout. Levin gestures to a wall hanging of a series of wooden pieces interlocked like puzzle pieces: “We added these installations on the wall here and there. They are meant to subtly reference the craft employed in building the pieces. Those are actual pieces of the furniture, the joints that hold them together, so that visitors can visually understand how they all fit together.” Other adornments are also elegant but understated: pottery pieces in earthy browns and creams from Buckland Ceramics cluster on tables while a few traditional Shaker-style boxes stack on a bedroom dresser. The overall effect is one of abundance but simplicity. As Levin says, “Everything has space to breathe here—you can really get your eyes around it, and there isn’t a ton of distraction. We figured that, because we didn’t add any adornment, we could really highlight the objects inside the building.” Enormous front windows that look onto Commercial Street keep the space bright, while the windows at the rear of the building offer reflections of the water beyond the wharves. Everywhere, ample natural light bounces off the polished wood of the furniture. “They’re all American-sourced hardwood: cherry, walnut, white oak—not red oak but white oak—and maple, hard maple,” Levin explains proudly. 

Her pride in the materials echoes a consistent theme of the new Chilton: true appreciation for old-fashioned craftsmanship, blended with a delight in the new and unexpected. “There’s just always one little pop, one little surprise. Adam calls them moments. I love seeing them. In each new piece, I look for that moment,” says Levin. One of the latest designs to hit the showroom floor is the Atlas chair. “It’s a bow back, so it harkens to the traditional bow back chair, but it’s also a complete transformation,” she says, bending down to show me the “moment” where the artfully curved back meets the seat. “That’s an excellent example. It perfectly encapsulates what we’re trying to do: Look back, see something, and then reinterpret it. I love that.”

Go with the Grain

“When we bought the company, they only carried cherrywood and a little bit of unfinished pine. We stopped doing the unfinished pine and went to all hardwood. We also eliminated stains,” Levin explains. “They used to stain the furniture. We said, you know what? Let’s just offer a variety of woods. Let’s allow the woods to speak for themselves.” Here are some of our ideas for encouraging Chilton’s wood tones to converse with colors in your space.

• Cherry is a remarkably versatile wood. Try some blue with lots of gray in it to complement the red tones of a mature Chilton Fjord cherrywood dining table, or add a pop of true red in the form of a lamp or a throw pillow—the cherrywood’s red will seem deeper and richer.
• The maple that Chilton offers is a pale, almost creamy tone that will age to a rich honey hue. You can pair it with the subtle pinks and grays that are present in its early incarnation, or bring forward its whites and creams. A maple Broadside bench with a creamy sheepskin tossed over it provides simple Scandinavian chic for any room.
• Walnut also matures over time, its warm tones deepening and darkening as it ages. Greens of all shades can look especially good against walnut. Upholstery for Rogers’s award-winning Nautilus lounge chair and ottoman comes in many different shades and fabrics, but we dream of a walnut Nautilus chair with olive Hopsack by Knoll upholstery for that perfect contemporary take on midcentury.
• White oak has slight blue-gray undertones, so it works nicely with whites that have some warmth and yellow in them. Chilton’s new Dune bed in white oak, with its modern take on spindles, would be extra inviting made up with undyed linen sheets and a creamy white matelassé coverlet.