Tedd Benson
Author, and Founder of Benson Woodworking Co., Inc
Since 1974, Tedd Benson has been the founding owner of Benson Woodworking Company. During that time, the company has built over 700 timberframe structures throughout the country and overseas. He and the company have been featured on a number of shows in the PBS series, This Old House, as well as Good Morning America, and the Today Show. Articles have appeared in The Atlantic, This Old House Magazine, Architectural Digest, Home, Builder Magazine, Fine Homebuilding, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and numerous other regional newspapers local to specific projects.
As a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit, Tedd has championed high-performance, sustainable homebuilding—always with an emphasis on innovation, quality and social responsibility.
Tedd has also authored three books on timberframing, the first of which, Building the Timber Frame House, (Scribner's Sons, 1980, Simon & Schuster, 1995) was instrumental in the revival of this centuries-old form of building with heavy timber. His second book, The Timber-Frame Home: Design, Construction, Finishing (Taunton Press, 1988), provided a comprehensive guide to the building of a timberframed house. This book was substantially rewritten in 1997, with the Revised and Updated Timber Frame Home, and remains a respected reference for builders and designers of timberframe homes. With the release of Tedd's fourth book, TIMBERFRAME, the Art and Craft of the Post-and-Beam Home, (Taunton Press 1999), there is perhaps the best visual reference yet for this venerable form of construction. He is currently working on his fourth book.
In 1984, Tedd was instrumental in forming the Timber Framers Guild of North America. He served on the Executive Board from 1988 to 1992. Since 1988, Tedd Benson and others at Benson Woodworking have been active in Habitat for Humanity.
Over the past three decades, Tedd's unwavering search for a new and better way to build has resulted in an exclusive design and building system called Open-Built®. Equally rooted in the craft culture of the past and the technological advances of the twenty-first century, Open-Built acknowledges what actually happens in the building process and seeks to eliminate inefficiencies and waste. But its first principle is that homes should be as unique and adaptable as the people who inhabit them.