We make art from the everyday, craft furniture for every day, and design workshops for you to do the same!

Dryfort is a Detroit based furniture studio seeking to turn building furniture into a game! Dryfort designs & builds intuitive frameworks for building unique pieces of furniture, and having fun while doing it! Our goal is to inspire others to explore their own modes of creativity by setting them up for success with accessible workshop experiences in creating something they’ll use or appreciate everyday.

We seek to share and inspire a passion for making in our community and beyond!

/// Founder Statements – Salvatore Gulino

/ Craft Narrative /
The year was 1996. On a cold winter night in southeast Michigan, Salvatore Gulino Jr. was born on his sister's 8th birthday. From then on, Sal had a knack for appropriating anything from birthdays to trash on the side of the road. He called many places home growing up, but always found himself somewhere along the Detroit "spoke" of Gratiot. As a young maker, when Sal needed a specific part or mechanism, he learned to be resourceful and appropriate material from the trash or find readymades. He would appropriate out of necessity. Now, with the skills and knowledge he's acquired through over a decade of making as a hobby, Sal elevates his craft to appropriation out of intention.

/ Design Narrative /
Sal's work experiences—from retail, handyman, and fabrication professions —put him at the forefront of consumer experience where he engaged in key points of product life cycles. He studied as an Industrial Designer before pivoting to Arts & Crafts as a practicing artist. Through his studies, Sal broadened his understanding of material life cycles and the critical role of human intervention at every step. While earning his Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, Sal explored commercial, hand-craft, and one-off modes of creating. Today, he crafts furniture, embodying his own handi-craft centric design philosophy. His mission is to inspire others to find passion in making things by hand and to utilize the tools around them to make it happen.

/ Art Statement /
I am a multi-media artist who repurposes found objects into sculptural artifacts. My work appropriates the urban American “everyday” and explores the overlap of function and narrative.