Fabien Dubrunfaut was born in 1956 in Tourcoing, in northern France. Early on, he found solace in drawing, creating invented worlds far removed from the surrounding gloom.

Admitted to the Lille School of Architecture in 1973, he was quickly disappointed by the lack of creative and artistic vision in his courses. He dropped out and, after a sometimes adventurous and chaotic journey that saw him cycling in Africa, doing stone masonry work in the south of France, and many other odd jobs, he ended up in Revel, then the capital of fine furniture in France. This is where , with this first initiation, he discovers his lifelong interest in the craft of woodworking.                            

He completes an accelerated training program, and after a brief (forced) return to masonry, he arrives in the United States in 1985. He quickly lands a position in a cabinetmaking workshop in Philadelphia, founded by four former students of PCA's "art furniture" program. Encouraging his creative passion, they entrust him with the keys to the workshop, where he works late into the night to produce his first pieces. Participation in the short-lived Philadelphia Furniture Guild brought him some modest sales success. But the harsh reality of an economic recession, which led to the closure of the company where he worked, and the need to provide for his new family, compell him to start his own cabinetmaking business in 1991. He increasingly focuses on commissions, with numerous renowned architects and designers as clients, and projects encompassing beautiful residential and commercial spaces throughout the East Coast.                                                           

And it is finally after thirty years of this activity, certainly flourishing but stressful and often artistically frustrating, that he decides to recharge, to rediscover the creative fervor of those late hours at the bench. Fabien now makes furniture part of the year at his home near Philadelphia, and the rest of the year at his workshop in a small village in Aveyron, France. There, with his artist wife Susan, he has restored and converted an old school house into a home and art studios.

Fabien Dubrunfaut on the site of the Moderne Gallery, Philadelphia, USA
Exhibition : Take a seat, Moderne Gallery, april 2024
"Against the Grain", Design Miami, sept 2023
"9 Must-See Collectible Design Shows to Check Out in May", Galerie Magazine, may 2024
Fabien Dubrunfaut on Incollect
"Walnut and Leather chair", magazine Fine woodworking n°296 mai-juin 2022