Carving A New Life

By Gia Miller
Photography by Justin Negard

“I knew this guy,” is often the start of a great story. And this one is no different.

“I knew this guy,” says Nick Cambareri in his thick Italian accent. “I was working at his house, and I told him about my wood bowls. He goes, ‘Maybe you can sell them at the museum I work for.’ I said, ‘Okay. Why don’t you come over and look at them?’ He did and he loved them, so I gave him a few to take home.”

It was 2021, and Cambareri, founder and then owner of Nick Cambareri Masonry, had just launched his new business, CARVED by Nick. A few days after that conversation, his children, adults with families of their own, came over for lunch.

“My dad said, ‘I was talking to this guy, and he said he might want to sell my bowls at the museum he works for,” his daughter Joanna Palumbo remembers. “We said, ‘What museum?’ He didn’t know, but he told us his client’s name, so my husband and I looked him up, and I was shocked. I said, ‘Dad! It’s The Met!’ But he didn’t even know what The Met was. He had never been. The first time he went was to see his bowls. His bowls were in The Met before he ever was.”

Some of the bowls and vases for The Met’s most recent order.

“This guy” was “the” guy in charge of all retail at The Met. Initially, Cambareri had about 15 pieces in the museum’s gift shop. They sold out within a few months, and the museum ordered more.

“The second order was for 70 pieces, and we were like, ‘Oh my God!’” says Palumbo. “And since then, they place a new order every few months. They even commissioned a piece from him.”

In 2022, The Met asked Cambareri to create a piece inspired by a work of art on display. Cambareri selected Thomas Cole’s 1833 oil painting “The Titan’s Goblet” from The American Wing and created a set of pillar candle holders, which they still sell today.

But the real story began in 1966, 1972 and 2018.

The shopsmith

Cambareri, who is in his late 70s, was born in a small province in the town of Reggio Calabria, Italy. He’s the youngest of six children.

“I remember when they brought the electricity to the town; I was about 12 years old,” he says. “Before that, we had no refrigerators, no washing machines, none of that stuff.”

He left school at 11 years old to work for his father’s tree cutting business. He carried a small knife in his pocket, and from time to time, he would carve things out of wood. In 1966, he moved to the U.S., where he shared a two-bedroom apartment in Mount Kisco with his two brothers and parents. Cambareri spoke no English and had no idea how he would earn a living, but he was motivated.  

“I will always remember the first English words I learned,” he says. “They were ‘I don’t know.’ My uncle was already living here, and he told me that if somebody talks to me, I should just say, ‘I don’t know.’ And the second thing he told me was to buy a lunch box and don’t leave home without it. He said the people who come and pick you up to go to work (will drop you off and) then they go somewhere else. They will leave you working somewhere, and if you don’t have lunch with you, you can’t go to the deli to get a lunch. So, my mother would pack the whole family sandwiches and fill the little thermos with coffee.”

Cambareri worked for a landscaper in Armonk for three years before starting his own business with one of his brothers and brother-in-law. He still spoke very little English because his colleagues were also Italian, but his former boss gave him several clients to get started. Soon, Cambareri Brothers took off.

During this time, Cambareri met his future wife, Rosa, who was still in high school. They married in September 1972, after she graduated high school. A few months later, they attended a home show at Westchester County Center.

“As we walked through, I noticed him looking at this Shopsmith Mark 5,” Rosa remembers. “He never said he wanted it, but I could tell he did. So, I went home, I did my research, and I ordered it.”

Rosa, who worked as a bookkeeper at a local shoe store, surprised her husband with the $1,200 machine. He loved it, but he was busy building his business, so it sat in the garage.

Fast forward to the winter of 2018.

“I was on the sofa looking at the television, and this guy was turning wood,” Cambareri remembers. “He was making a wood ball, and I looked, and I said, ‘I have that machine in the garage, and I’ve never used it!’ She spent all that money, and I never used it. So, I got up, put my shoes on and went out. I got a piece of firewood, and I cut it. Then I set the machine in the middle of the garage, I put the wood into the points, and I came up with this,” he says, holding a small, smooth wooden bowl.

It took Cambareri about a half hour to an hour to make his first bowl. Then he ran back into the house and said to his wife, “Honey, look what I did!” Rosa was impressed. From there, as his daughter says, “he got the itch,” and he began carving and collecting wood.

His Bedford Hills “playground”

When Cambareri and his wife moved to Bedford Hills in the mid 1980s, it was a big deal. Everyone in his family lived in Mount Kisco. The couple originally purchased the 4.5-acre property in 1978 as a space for Cambareri to plant and eventually sell trees. In 1984, they decided to build a house on the property, and they moved in a year later.

His landscaping business had grown to include masonry, which he enjoyed more, and in 1986, the brothers agreed to split their business. Nick Cambareri Masonry focused on masonry, but he continued to do landscaping and excavation, as well as snow removal in the winter months. Over time, his business grew to 25 employees.

Cambareri in his greenhouse-turned-workshop exclusively dedicated to wooden bowls.

Cambareri and his wife raised their children in the Bedford Hills home, and in his free time, Cambareri worked on the property. He landscaped, built a garden and greenhouse, etc. But as he began to collect wood for his new hobby, his backyard took on a different feel.

Today, as you walk around the side of his house past the garage where the Shopsmith was stored, you’ll initially see a large, fenced garden where Nick grows tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, herbs, Swiss chard and lettuce. Next, there’s a spacious greenhouse that he once used for pruning bonsais. Tools, some electric and many not, hang from almost every inch of wall space. The floor is lined with pieces of wood in various stages of production. And in the far-left corner is a black wood lathe that Cambareri uses to turn raw wood into bowls. This workshop is exclusively dedicated to creating wooden bowls.

Travel a few paces further, and you’ll encounter a sculpture resembling a sea creature, which he made from a Juniper root.

“Someone said, ‘You got to put something on his head,’ so I made him this hat,” Cambareri explains.

Then, the real “fun” begins. Tree trunks, piles of branches, logs of all shapes and sizes, and gigantic roots several feet wide and deep line the winding, curved path to his main workshop. Cambareri has carefully collected these pieces over the past several years, and he has a vision for what each one can become.

“You see this trunk and root,” he asks. “I’m gonna cut the trunk into three-inch-thick pieces to make small tables. Then I’ll use the root for the bases.”

Cambareri’s newest tool, an Alaskan sawmill with an 8-foot blade that can quickly and evenly cut through large tree trunks. Two people are required for operation.

The wood is not organized in any particular way. As his “guys” bring the wood in, they deposit it wherever there’s room. Occasionally, when he has time, Cambareri will walk through the piles and sort them, specifically separating any pieces with rot.

Towards the end of the winding path is Cambareri’s 24’x24’ shed, which previously held lawnmowers as well as masonry and gardening tools for his business; it’s now getting a makeover as he turns it into a workshop. He sold Nick Cambareri Masonry earlier this year and has stayed on as a consultant to help the new owner during the transition. As Cambareri winds down his masonry and landscaping career, he is planning and organizing his 2025 transition to CARVED by Nick full time. And this shed-turned-workshop is where the real magic happens. This is where he makes everything that’s not a bowl. Like his smaller workshop, it’s packed. There are a series of filing cabinets filled with small tools, nuts, bolts and screws lining the right wall, large saws and tools along the back, open shelves full of wood along the left wall, and various worktables in the middle.“I’ve got my big saws in here,” he says. “Almost all of my saws are here, and so are my other cutting tools.”

But his newest tool, the pièce de résistance, lies just around the corner.

“Come see my little saw,” Cambareri jokes as he opens the door to a much smaller shed. “Look at this thing! The blade is eight feet long! It’s an Alaskan sawmill. That’s how we [it requires two people] cut those big trees. We can adjust the thickness and slice all the pieces the same size.”

The remainder of the usable land is closer to the house, and it features a manicured lawn filled with a variety of mature trees—including evergreens, viburnums and red maples—that Cambareri has passionately cared for over the years.

“When I bought this property, there were only two trees,” he explains. “Everything else, I planted.”

One of those two trees is now a tremendous, majestic oak tree that Cambareri believes rivals the Bedford Oak.

“Oh, my God, I love trees,” he exclaims. “Trees are good for many different things. They’re good for the environment. They’re good to make things. They’re good for protection. They’re good for beauty. They are useful in so many different ways. That’s why I love to grow them, and I like to prune them and shape them. When the trees were smaller, I used to come back from working 10 hours, grab a beer and go out with a pair of pruners. I used to make pompoms and spirals. I love to be creative.”

Creating a brand

CARVED by Nick wasn’t Cambareri’s idea—it was his kids’.

“Every time we would come for lunch, he would say, ‘You have to see what I did this time,’ and he’d show us another piece,” says Palumbo. “And one day, we were looking downstairs, and the table was filled. My brother and I realized we should do something with this, and that’s when we decided to surprise him. He never intended to start this business. It was his Christmas present from us. My brother is a graphic designer, so he created the logo and did all the still photography. I work in marketing, so I created the content and pricing strategy. We built the website, incorporated the business and presented CARVED by Nick to him at Christmas in 2020. Then I launched it on social media.”

A piece of red cedar Cambareri found, cleaned and rounded out.

And that was, essentially, that. Palumbo and her brother shared the news with their friends and family, and word spread organically. At first, he was mainly making and selling bowls of various shapes and sizes. Some looked like a traditional bowl, while others were shaped like flowers or followed the organic shape of the tree. He then made a few tables, animal and other sculptures, cutting boards, vases and candlesticks.

When he began making bigger pieces, like tables, Cambareri realized it was time to leave his garage and expand from the greenhouse. There wasn’t enough room, and between the dust and the scraps, it was a big mess. So he began working in the large shed. The more he made, the more the piles of wood in the backyard and the number of tools he owned grew.

“I love tools,” he says. “And I have a lot of tools. Every space is full of tools. I’ve always believed that you got to have the right tools to do the work. And if not, you might be able to do the work, but it will take longer, and you won’t do it so good.”

For Cambareri, finding the wood isn’t too difficult. He prefers hardwoods, and his favorites are black walnut, oak, black cherry, red cedar and willow, which he says looks like marble inside.

“Since I work outside, and I still cut trees, whenever I see a piece of wood that I think can do something with, I bring it home,” Cambareri explains. “If I didn’t bring it home, I would have to dump it or cut it for firewood. But not every wood is good for firewood. Willow isn’t good for firewood, but I cut a Willow tree that was full of burls, and I made beautiful pieces out of it.”

Those burls, the growths or lumps on the sides of trees, have intricate grain patterns, which Cambareri loves. He turns them into freeform pieces that serve as bowls, platters or centerpieces.

“When I get a piece of wood, I turn it around, and it kind of tells me what it wants to be,” Cambareri explains. “I look at the different shape and at the different pattern. Even by the way I turn it, it gives me a different look.”

A wooden “sea creature” sculpture Cambareri made from juniper root.

Yet still, there are times when, once he begins working, he realizes he was wrong.

“If it doesn’t work, I’ll cut a little more and turn it around,” he says. “Or sometimes, when I don’t like it, I’ll just let it go and move on to the next one.”

When he’s ready to make a new piece, Cambareri begins by walking through his yard. If he’s working on an order, he’ll search for the perfect piece of wood. Otherwise, he will let the wood tell him what he should make and what it should be. He’ll cut the log and bring it to his workshop.

“I have a Makita grinder with a disc that’s like a chainsaw, and that takes a lot of wood out quick,” he explains.

Once he’s created the shape using various blades on the grinder, he sands it, smooths it and then oils it. Sometimes, Cambareri will cut four, five or six logs out of one tree and work on them together. He’ll grind all the pieces at the same time, sand them at the same time, etc., instead of going back and forth between tools.

Today, Cambareri makes bowls and cutting boards, vases and planters, candle holders and centerpieces, large and small sculptures, and every so often, tables and benches. He also does engraving.

“My favorite thing to make are the more interesting pieces,” he says. “Anybody can make a bowl; that’s not what I like to do. I like to get a piece of wood and see what I can come up with.

I like to be creative. I like to do something different all the time.”

But he doesn’t consider himself an artist.

“I’m somebody who’s willing to try.”

This article was published in the November / December 2024 edition of Connect to Northern Westchester.