Zena Longhorn, carved wood and twigs.

Traveling west into the Catskills on Route 28, a few miles past the junction of 375, your eyes have probably been drawn to a discreet black-and-white sign that reads Rural American Design in small letters, underscored with a stylized graphic of a small heart bursting out of its jagged shell. Beyond the sign sits a 1950s gas station with a glass-paneled garage door and a regularly mutating well-lit window display. The boxy building is punctuated with large logs standing on end, carved into giant threaded spirals. The letters mounted to the wall during the building's previous life as the Glenford Service Station remain on the facade, adorned with a fresh coat of paint, though minus the i in "Service." What is not immediately apparent is the nature of this business.

Custom-designed walnut table.

Upon entering, it becomes obvious that this former gas station is the love child of a boutique art gallery and a high-end furniture showroom. The building has been gutted to create an open, loft-like space, decorated with paintings, mirrors, and wood sculptures from floor to 15-foot ceiling. In a corner stands a clothing rack adorned with silk-screened T-shirts and canvas tote bags. In the center of the room, a sleek, eight-foot plank dining room table stands on a base joined with unfinished twigs. The table is accentuated by a thick solid-wood bench featuring extraordinary butterfly joints. Sculpted wood stumps and svelte but sturdy three-legged stools pepper the scene. It's a striking blend of Nakashima craftsmanship, Danish modernism, and Shaker simplicity. I learned from the owners that this eclectic blend of objects d'art is a showroom created by Tara DeLisio to exhibit furniture and sculptures made by her husband, Jonah Meyer, and painted furniture and country embroideries by her mother, Jill DeLisio.

Walnut trestle table.

I met DeLisio and Meyer one springlike February afternoon at the Serv ce Station. (The missing i has been incorporated into the pronunciation of the name.) The couple has known each other for seven years and been married for two and a half of them. DeLisio informed me, "I was definitely the only one interested in opening this space." Fresh from a master's degree in elementary education, and lacking the desire to continue down that path, she decided to change direction but was not sure how.

Pennsylvania native Jonah Meyer graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in the early 1990s with a BFA in painting. He had made one chair during his tenure at school. After realizing that it was far easier to sell a chair than a painting, he crafted his first line of furniture—a sculptural line of twig-based pieces in which no chair was ever duplicated. That success convinced him that furniture was a viable and lucrative way to harness his artistry. So, with no schooling or woodworking experience, he began teaching himself to produce wood-slab furniture. Entering the design and furniture show circuit, Meyer slowly garnered a reputation as a fine furniture producer.

Longing for a headquarters near her native Woodstock, DeLisio found the site. After learning the overhead was manageable, the couple began renting and renovating the dilapidated building with no real idea of what it was going to be. After contemplating a local art gallery and a performance venue, the definition of the business evolved out of the popular response to the furniture that Meyer was producing at his Kingston studio.

On a tour of his crowded workshop, cluttered with machinery, tools, pieces of furniture in various states of construction, logs, sticks, slabs, and large hollow stumps, a laid-back Meyer pointed out that he exclusively uses wood and sticks that he collects himself. "The wood I get is mostly local, from tree surgeons, and varies from oak to cherry to black walnut to sycamore. I save a lot of trees from being chopped up for firewood when I see them getting cut down." After cutting logs into slabs with a huge chainsaw, he slow-cures them to prevent cracking and then it's time to start sanding, which can be up to 60 percent of the job. It is that time constraint on producing new work that has brought the couple to the brink of hiring their first employee.

Maintaining an inventory with items ranging from $20 for a painted wood block or cutting board to several thousand for one of the large tables or spiral logs has contributed to their success. With inexpensive products such as handmade T-shirts among the offerings, curious walk-in customers are more likely to open their wallet than if the setting was exclusively fine furniture and sculpture. In addition, many of the smaller items dually function as marketing tools, as the limited-edition silk-screened tees that have become collectibles in New York City.

With a shrug, DeLisio said, "It has taken a couple of years to even get comfortable with what we are doing here. I didn't study art or ever intend to have an art-based career. Jonah has been doing art and furniture for 15 years, but since we have opened Serv ce Station, now we actually have a furniture company."

Meyer chuckled, "It's not a business model that we would recommend for anyone." A smiling DeLisio added, "It's just about believing in yourself and working really hard, seven days a week." Check out www.servcestation.com and www.jonahmeyer.com for more information, or call (845) 657-9788.