In his 20s, Gallo would take the train from San Francisco to Oakland, where his family lived. He would pick out wood, slice it with his dad’s table saw and carry it back home to sand and finish in his little apartment.
Back then, he was a hairdresser, and he started showing clients pictures of his handiwork. A wealthy, older gentleman offered to buy a piece for $400, and that was the start of something bigger, he says, something beyond a salon in the West Bay.
“I remember thinking that was so much money,” Gallo says. “I thought he was just doing it to be nice.” But soon, friends were commissioning furniture from him, and he moved to North Carolina, the furniture capital of the country, to learn what he could.
Not surprisingly, he found the style too stale and mass-produced, so he and his partner, Brad, moved to Phoenix to be close to his mother and sister. He became a cabinetmaker’s apprentice, and his talents unfolded. Soon he got good enough to open a store, showcasing his and other designers’ custom furnishings. Now, Gallo’s former boss, Larry Vawter of Custom Woodworking, helps craft the furniture Gallo designs.
“He [Vawter] let me voice my opinion. If a client with modern tastes came in, he would let me help them,” Gallo says of the early days. “I still make my furniture in his shop. We know each other. When you’re friends, you’re more tolerant of mistakes.”
Gallo’s store did well and his reputation grew. Then the Valley’s elite started tapping him as an interior designer. He got so much business that he had to set the woodworking aside, and his furniture disappeared from the store.
“I was doing so well that I got sucked into design,” he says. “I opened the store because I wanted to make furniture. Some great interior design opportunities came along and it was an honor to do it, but my goal is to start getting into the shop.
“I’m finding myself drawn back to where I wanted to be originally.”
This summer, he started making furniture again and not just for his interior design clients. The pieces are popping up in Haus like multicolored wooden gems. He trolls scrap yards for the gnarly-est, knottiest wood he can find, cuts it into thin strips, arranges it and glues the layers together several pieces at a time. Then he saws the edges for a perfect cut and sands it to look like one solid piece of wood.
“It’s a timely process, and it’s not a cheap process,” he says. “What you lose in inexpensive wood, you make up for in labor.”
Recycled wood is high on Gallo’s list. He’s making headboards and benches out of 20 railroad ties that he recently scored – they baked in the Arizona sun so long that they are nearly petrified. Some customers stop by with donations; one woman was tearing down her house and let Gallo salvage the pine. (He plans to make her a table with it, as a gift.)
The idea to combine different types of wood struck Gallo several years ago, when he saw pieces of neglected wood stacked and bound together at a scrap yard. At the time, he thought it was his own invention. But a couple years later, the technique started popping up across the country.
That actually made him happy, like he was part of some current larger than himself. All sorts of people can come up with the same idea at the same time, he says. He comes back to the notion that unlikely pieces of wood – just like people – somehow fit together.
And in the hands of a master craftsman, it can be beautiful.