In March of this year, husband and wife Shelby Griffiths and Michael Chambers opened up their first storefront, Furniture Fosters, on Eagle Rock Boulevard. According to the Furniture Fosters’ website, the co-owners specialize in selling restored vintage Danish furniture and pianos.
Griffiths and Chambers became interested in Danish furniture before meeting each other, as Chambers worked at a Danish furniture store and Griffiths had a history in design. According to Griffiths, the couple originally met on Hinge during the pandemic and bonded over their shared interest in furniture design and their trips to Denmark.
“I started selling [furniture] out of my apartment and her apartment,” Chambers said. “That’s where the name ‘Furniture Fosters’ came into play, because basically everything in our apartments was for sale. It was like a store out of our apartments.”
Aside from their personal interests in Danish furniture, Griffiths said their desire to sell Danish furniture stemmed from the furniture style’s practicality and aesthetics.
“There’s a lot of cool history about […] this kind of melding of clean lines in modern materials, but with ergonomics and multifunctionality being a part of it,” Griffiths said. “[People] live in a lot of small apartments in Scandinavian cities, so having a coffee table that I can turn into a dining table is really practical.”
Expanding beyond furniture, Griffiths said pianos are the passion side of their business. According to Chambers, selling pianos was originally inspired by his love of music. He said he played the piano as a child, which carried into his adulthood, when he studied at Berklee College of Music. According to Chambers, he began collecting pianos in 2016, and he grew more serious about selling pianos in 2020.
“He’s been obsessed with having special pianos, or these really cool, unique pianos that you don’t see in other places,” Griffiths said. “Some of these pianos we find all over the world […] we’ve driven across the country for pianos, we’ve gone to other countries for pianos.”
Griffiths said one of her favorite instruments currently at Furniture Fosters is the hammerspinet — a hybrid between a harpsichord and a piano.
“[Hammerspinets] are so hard to come by, and it’s just really cool that we’re able to restore these [instruments] back to their former glory and give them an audience that maybe they wouldn’t have had,” Griffiths said.
According to Griffiths and Chambers, they travel around the country and to Denmark several times a year to pick up pieces. Additionally, they said they have several pieces imported.
To get these furniture pieces and pianos in proper condition to sell, Chambers and Griffiths said they had to learn how to revive and restore them. The couple said that due to their busy schedules, they now outsource to Piano Specialist Kat Beers and to a refurbisher in East Los Angeles. However, Chambers said they still occasionally restore the pieces themselves.
“A lot of times, I’ll sand the pieces and [Griffiths will] stain,” Chambers said. “Basically, [we have been] finding our strengths and talents and kind of letting each other do [what we’re best at].”
According to Griffiths, the process of learning how to care for these vintage pieces was one of trial and error.
“You end up destroying a lot of pieces, so you just have to be slightly brave,” Chambers said. “I mean, the whole thing was like baby steps.”
Shane LaRue originally met Chambers while working on music in LA. He said he became a friend of the couple and now helps run their business.
“We are all sort of trading hats at all times,” LaRue said. “Sometimes I wear the hat of looking after the shop, while they do more admin-type stuff. And then sometimes they’ll look after the shop, where I’ll do more construction and projects.”
LaRue said he enjoys looking after the shop and seeing customers’ reactions to the different pieces of furniture and instruments.
“Everyone that comes into the shop says compliments on how beautiful the furniture is, how nice the shop is,” LaRue said. “They seem to have a good feeling when they come in here […] I think we love when we see that [customers] posted online about the furniture and they post [a] picture of the furniture in their house. I think it makes us all really happy.”
Chambers said there are many ideas and goals on their vision board, such as teaching music as early as October 2025. They are working on creating a lobby and space dedicated to these music lessons, Griffiths said.
“We have a studio we’re building out in the back, and we’re going to be offering music lessons soon,” Griffiths said. ”We’re hosting events here as [business] gets a little thinner in between furniture drops […] we’re figuring it out. That’s the story about being a new business, you know, [it] is always growing.”
Contact Allyson Chan at achan2@oxy.edu.
