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Our Mission

Handshouse Studio, a not-for-profit innovative educational organization, initiates adventurous hands-on projects as a way to explore history, understand science, and perpetuate the arts.

If you want to understand the world, you must look from many sides.
If you look from many sides you will see the three dimensions.
If you map the three dimensions, you will begin to understand.
Build it and you will learn.


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Rebuilding the Gwozdziec Synagogue 2011-2012

New! We have a website dedicated specifically to this project.

Take me to the Making History website >> handshousestudio.org

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in collaboration with Handshouse Studio, is rebuilding components of an exquisite 17th-century wooden synagogue. This historic structure will be set within the stunning architectural space of the modern building being planned. The Museum is under construction on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto facing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising monument, and is scheduled to open in 2013. For more information and an application, click here.

We are offering workshops in Poland to create an 85% scale replica of the timber roof structure and polychrome wooden ceiling from the now lost 17th century wooden Gwoździec Synagogue. The completed roof structure will be installed in the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews and become a major part of the permanent core exhibition, set within the stunning architectural space of the Museum's modern building.



Laura Brown Explains the Projectat the MassArt site!
To see the movie clip, click on the link in the blue balloon titled: Hear Professor Laura Brown describe it.
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In the News

  • Tablet Magazine Feature


  • June 15, 2011 New York Times: A 300-Year-Old Synagogue Comes Back to Life in Poland"

  • Museum of the History of Polish Jews: Synagogue Roof Almost finished.

  • Museum of the History of Polish Jews: Website

  • Timber Framers Guild is participating in workshops, and offers photos and text. Click here for the TFG Blog and a TFG newsletter article.

    Gwozdziec Synagogue Booklet Available

    A booklet detailing Handshouse's proposal to make the Gwozdziec Synagogue roof and ceiling for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

    Download it here in the form of a PDF.
    Or you may order it online.

    •   Other Projects    

    Bell Tower

    A team of carpenters from the US and UK built an 18th century timber framed Polish Bell Tower using traditional tools and techniques. Also, Mass Art faculty and students designed and constructed an iron cupola large enough to cast a 300-pound iron bell while using a traditional 19th century American bell mold. Read more.

    The Great Sphinx Project

    On a crisp fall day in October 2009, Handshouse Studio and Egyptologist Mark Lehner began a project to replicate the colossal stone nose of the Great Sphinx of Giza. This project marked another joint effort between Handshouse's Rick and Laura Brown and Dr. Lehner to investigate a historical mystery of ancient Egypt. In the process, they and Providence Pictures created a film on the Great Sphinx for WGBH's Nova, broadcast in 2010. Read more.
     

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