For Campus Living staffer, hand-crafting furniture is a labor of love

Details have always made the difference for Maureen Matesic.

An upholsterer with Campus Living’s maintenance staff, Matesic will tell you most of her job revolves around working with furniture — the chairs, sofas and other pieces that create living spaces in residence halls on the North and South campuses.

“When I first started, my supervisor said, ‘Walk around the residence halls. Take a look at the furniture, talk to people who live and work there. You’ll see what needs to be done.’”

Through those conversations, Matesic says she finds out where a new sofa or chair might be needed — in a student room or a lounge.

“My goal has always been to get to know the people who are part of the life of these buildings,” she says, “so they will tell me when things need repair or when something might be a good addition, furniture-wise.”

One addition, an old piano bench, was given a new life, re-upholstered with the UB logo. That led Matesic to other, more ambitious furniture rehabilitation projects, including two rocking chairs, also featuring the UB logo.

“Before long, word came back,” she says. “‘Do more of these. We love these!’”

During Opening Weekend this year, Matesic got an idea for a superheroes sofa for the lobby of Goodyear Hall. “To me, the students are superheroes, with what they have to deal with in the world today. I decided to do a sofa as a tribute to them.”

Doing a Google search for ‘superheroes,’ Matesic says she looked over the images and picked out an assortment, planning to replicate the characters for the sofa’s upholstery.

“Campus Living loves these and, in fact, [Campus Living Director] Tom Tiberi stopped by my South Campus workshop a few weeks ago to let me know that we need more of them,” says Matesic, who has also completed a ‘Star Wars’-themed sofa, which can be found in the lobby of Clement Hall.

For Matesic, all of this is a happy state of affairs, and an opportunity to continue doing something she loves. In fact, during the years before she joined UB, Matesic’s entire working life revolved around the world of hand-crafted furniture.

“Around 1980, I had an opportunity to work for the original Kittinger Furniture Company at Elmwood and Hertel for about 13 years,” she says. “I had completed a New York State-sponsored program in upholstery, and one of the instructors was an upholsterer from Kittinger. So I stayed in touch with him and the company.

“I kept pushing, and finally I got a call for an interview. I went in and got hired.”

Matesic acquired what proved to be lifelong skills in design, cutting and sewing from Kittinger’s master craftsmen as they created handmade pieces of furniture.

“They hadn’t had a young woman doing this with them before, so I was able to build very good work relationships, learn many techniques and gain a lot of knowledge,” she says. “I learned 95 percent of what I know — and have used throughout my working life — there.”

By 1993 the company had begun to go through a series of ownership changes. “I started to get the feeling Kittinger wasn’t going to be around too much longer,” Matesic says. After accepting another job offer, she left Kittinger about 18 months before the company closed in 1995.

About a year later, she heard from a cabinetmaker from Kittinger. “He told me, ‘Maureen, a bunch of us are going to get the company going again. Would you be interested in getting in on the very beginnings of it?’” She said yes immediately.

“It’s because I always had a love for that furniture,” she says. “We spent about six months in the old plant, which was in a state of ruin. But this man, the cabinetmaker, along with his family and his brothers, had bought out the rights for all of the patterns, drawings and remaining stock.

“He re-started the company in the Tri-Main Building,” Matesic says. “He leased out the sixth floor of the old Trico plant, and we moved all of the stock in, set up and got Kittinger going again.”

Matesic says the new company got its start with only 10 individuals, with each person taking on multiple roles. Kittinger also resumed creating furniture for the White House, a line of business that began for the original company in the late 1960s.

“We did a lot of work for the White house then,” Matesic says. “The Clintons did a huge remodeling job after they got in, and revamping all of the furniture was a big part of that.

“One of our small group of ex-Kittinger employees, and myself, did the Cabinet Room table, putting the leather top on it. We came in at night to do that. Ray, one of the new owners, offered anyone who worked on the table a chance to go when they delivered it to the White House,” she says.

Matesic says since President Trump has been in office, the ‘new’ Kittinger has built another 11-foot-long addition for the Cabinet Room table. “It was 22 feet long when we assembled it that day we were there, and it’s now 33 feet long.”

She says additional work for the White House included “making a table for the Roosevelt Room. And 28 conference room chairs I still see when they show that room on TV. We also made a sofa and chair. We did work for Camp David.”

Following the economic downturn in 2008, things got tough for the company. Matesic was one of the first ones to be let go at the end of the year.

Some weeks later, while working temp jobs, Matesic responded to an ad for an upholsterer at UB. She received a call for an interview during Thanksgiving week 2010, and was offered the job two weeks later.

“My job here is different than others I have had,” says Matesic. “And I like that about it. It comes with its own set of challenges.

“One of the things I love is working with the students — getting their thoughts on what they would like to see, as far as furniture, in these residence hall lounge areas.”

Before Opening Weekend a couple of years ago, Matesic says she decided to add a sofa to the lobby area of Goodyear Hall. “There needed to be more places for people to sit, and I wanted to put it in this little nook over in Goodyear — something that would make people smile.

“So I brought up one of two 50-year-old Kittinger sofas from a basement storage room in Goodyear, and did it up in ‘Minions,’ those crazy little yellow comedy characters from the movies,” she says.

“It turned out to be very popular and did, in fact, make people smile when they saw it.”

Matesic says that while the sofa didn’t last, she cut the Minions out and saved them for another day. “They are hilarious, and the residence halls haven’t seen the last of them.

“People who are in the furniture industry, they have a thing for it,” she explains. “Furniture gets in your blood and you have this love for it, along with appreciation for it. When I wasn’t doing it, I really missed it.

“I still love to come to work every day, just as I did with Kittinger. Because I am doing what I love.”