John Charles Thomas Jr. in his workshop off Hermitage Road
John Charles Thomas Jr. is happiest when he’s creating. As a child, he made bridges out of LEGO bricks and then tested their weight-bearing loads. A Richmond native, he applied to the University of Virginia’s architecture school — his only college application — because he believed that was the only route that would take him to a completed degree. Though it took eight years, with a break in the middle when he worked as a general contractor, he graduated in 2010 and launched his career as a furniture designer.
Now at the helm of Thomas (Trades) LLC — so named to encompass the range of work he does — Thomas creates site-specific pieces by spending time with his clients to learn exactly how to address their needs.
R•Home: How did you come to your craft?
John Charles Thomas Jr.: My grandmother and grandfather ran a brick mason and construction business for years. I started my company because my grandmother had a project for me, but she said I couldn’t work on it until I was official. It was important for her that I learn, early on, what it meant to have a business. I hadn’t finished my [U.Va.] degree, and I was out of school, and my parents were saying, “You need to get a job.” I didn’t want to work for anyone else. I started the company with painting and flooring, but my last semester at U.Va., my classes were a chair design studio, a furniture design/build course and a self-defined course where I taught [a classmate] how to do wood work, and he taught me how to weld. That semester, I got all A’s. That was my calling.
R•Home: Define design/build as it applies to what you do.
Thomas: In the context of real estate, design/build includes site, environment, what the clients like and dislike, materials, cost, even weather. This parallels designing furniture. Being able to see it from the top down, with the designer as the architect, allows me to consider all those factors. It’s a very iterative process, happening not just inside me, but with the client.
R•Home: Talk about a project that stands out in your mind.
Thomas: I made a dining room console for a couple who live on Monument Avenue. They had an old elevator, which had been in the house, but had been sitting in the basement for decades. We took the old elevator and created a console. The old accordion doors became the structure for a wine rack. Some solid steel mesh, beautiful with little circles, became the sliding door. Then we used live-edge cherry for the top edge. It was something I couldn’t even have imagined.
R•Home: Why do customers come to you instead of a traditional furniture store?
Thomas: Nowadays, everything has a feeling of being mass-produced and being cranked out; it’s made to be sold. [But] people just want to be different. People get excited when they’re involved in the process; they feel like it’s theirs because they had a say in its creation. You can’t really tell a story of finding a piece of furniture in the furniture store. You have this involvement you don’t get anywhere else.
R•Home: What’s next for your business?
Thomas: We have a new collection, called Moroccan Moods, that features hand-crafted coffee and end tables, and a console. They’re being offered through Bridget Beari Designs, so they are customizable with those exclusive colors. Thomas (Trades) is a one-person show. It was always going to be a family-owned and -operated business, in my mind. Now that I have a son, it means even more.