Biography:
Excerpted from Woodshop News, by A.J. Hamler
Being
interested in old tools is something that began when Underhill
was growing up in Washington, D.C., where an older sister
worked at the Smithsonian Institution.
"At the
time, I thought that was what adults did for a living," he
said of her involvement with American artifacts. "Only later
did I discover that there was not a lot of call for broadax
skills."
After
graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, Underhill and his wife moved to the Southwest in the
early 1970s to pursue a career in theater. When that didn't
work out, a subsequent move led to a rekindling of his interest
in traditional tools and woodworking.
"My
wife and I were living in the mountains of northern New Mexico,
nearly 17 miles from the nearest electrical line," he said.
"If you wanted to do something up there, you did it with whatever
you brought with you." Underhill said the forced independence
of living in a remote area of the mountains and doing "the
homesteading thing," in addition to the environmental issues
of appropriate technology, firmly established his love for
the highly efficient tools of the past.
Underhill
returned East a few years later to further develop his woodworking
knowledge, and studied colonial American technology at Duke
University in Durham, N.C. While he dabbled in both woodworking
and blacksmithing following graduation, it was the birth of
his first daughter that prompted Underhill to look for permanent
work.
Drawing
on his theater background, Underhill put together a proposal
for a woodworking show and took it to the University of North
Carolina Center for Public Television. He was rejected, but
a second try in 1978 led to the taping of the first 13 episodes
of The Woodwright's Shop. Initially airing only on PBS stations
in North Carolina beginning in 1979, the show went national
two years later.
At about
the same time his television show was catching on, Underhill
moved to Williamsburg, Va., to accept the position of master
housewright at Colonial Williamsburg, where he also served
as director of interpretive development.
