About Us

Our Heritage

Multiple Generations

Our Heritage

Rareloom Workshop’s heritage dates back to Richard “Dick” Lee and his wife Helen Lee’s hardscrabble dairy farm in South Central Idaho, between Jerome and Twin Falls.  The couple homesteaded a rocky, windswept 40 acre parcel in the middle of the Great Depression, raising dairy cattle (and four children) and selling milk.  They supported the farm with outside jobs, Dick by teaching high school shop and creating his own line of products from his workshop.  His work was prolific and diverse over the years – everything from original design tables and chairs to caricature carving to welded sculpture and casting in aluminum and bronze.   The homestead’s only bathroom doubled as Helen’s darkroom for her budding photography studio, which had won a contract with a New York photo stock company that supplied a variety of publishers and magazines.  Her keen eye for composition, natural curiosity and darkroom skills made her a local celebrity and historian right up to her passing at the age of 97. 
 
John C. Lee
Helen’s talent and passion for photography caught on with John, their oldest son, who as a university student helped pay for his education.  Long before the days of Polaroids, overnight film processing and cell phone cameras, he’d attend college dances and parties to photograph couples and the festivities, developing the negatives and proofs that same night from which orders could be placed the following day.  Like his mother, he mastered the science and art of the darkroom and throughout his professional career as a veterinarian, he continued to perfect the technical and composition aspects of his photography – shooting landscapes and people across the western U.S., South America, England and Europe.  Always a student of the masters, he was fortunate to have taken instruction from some remarkable photographers along the way including Ruth Bernhard, a contemporary of Ansel Adams among other outstanding West Coast artists such as Jerry Uelsmann, John Sexton, and John Telford.  John’s landscape, nude and still life images can be found in the Idaho State Historical Museum, Idaho Capitol Building and in private collections across the country. 
 
When he inherited much of Dick’s equipment and lumber in the early 1980s, John built a new workshop and began making his own furniture outside Meridian, Idaho.  In 1987, his prolific period of segmented turning and box making began and continues today. As with photography, he strives to perfect and innovate by learning from other accomplished craftsmen and designers including Australian artist Peter Cook, English master box makers Andrew Lloyd and Peter Crawford and master turner Ray Allen.  His work has been featured in numerous books including several of Tony Lydgate’s feature books on boxes (The Art of Making Elegant Wood Boxes, and 400 Boxes – The Art of Concealment).  Galleries that have carried his work include Northwest Gallery of Fine Woodworking (Seattle), The Wood Merchant (La Conner), The Real Mother Goose (Portland), Artwood (Bellingham) and Art Source (Boise) which he and his wife, Luann, helped establish. 
 
John has also been a frequent instructor, teaching privately and through classes offered at Woodcraft on joinery,

View John’s Wood Creations Inventory  

View John’s Photo Inventory  

Roger J. Lee      
John’s youngest son, Roger grew up playing in his grandfather’s workshop and later building small projects in his dad’s new woodshop.  But his first attraction was to rock – hunting, collecting, polishing, cutting and even selling them to his classmates in grade school.  John’s large animal veterinary practice would periodically take the family to one of the most remarkable places on the planet for fine jaspers:  ranches along the Owyhee River in Oregon including Jim Morison’s homestead, after which Morrisonite is named.   Woodworking, specifically box making and turning, became important therapy in his recovery from a rare blood disorder his senior year in high school.  Since then, woodworking has ranged from a full-time vocation to only occasional work in the shop amidst a professional career, family and other sideline pursuits around home moving and remodeling projects.  Roger’s work has been featured in The Art of Making Elegant Wood Boxes and carried by galleries including the Northwest Gallery of Fine Woodworking (Seattle), The Wood Merchant (La Conner), The Real Mother Goose (Portland), Artwood (Bellingham) and Art Source (Boise).   

Luann Lee

Artist

Luann brought her own set of talents to the family…
Growing up in the front range of Colorado, Luann started drawing at an early age – art seemed to be in her blood.  She began painting in oils in the late 1950’s and in watercolor, her favorite medium, in the early 1960s.  She was actively engaged with the IWS (Idaho chapter of the National Watercolor Society), as was inducted as a merit member.  Her paintings, drawings and pen and ink work can be found in the Idaho State Capitol, Boise State University, War Hawk Museum, the covers of several trade magazines and numerous private and corporate collections.  A life-long learner, Luann broadened her artistic palate in the 1980s via three years of fine art instruction at Boise State University to include clay, bronze and mixed media sculpture.  Her two and three-dimensional work has been shown in numerous galleries in Idaho and the Pacific NW.  In July 2020, she lost a brief fight with pancreatic cancer, but a number of original works of art are still available for sale. 

Becki Lee Timson

Artist, Photographer, Teacher, WFPB Chef and Coach

Becki inherited talents from both of her parents and has developed more of her own!