Doug Green, a Cape Elizabeth resident, began a small furniture manufacturing company in 1993 with an idea that he said was a breakthrough.

Green Design Furniture, based in Portland, is an artisan manufacturer that combines hand craftsmanship with modern tools and technology. That might not sound so revolutionary, but Doug Green said the manufacturing process he has patented “is going to be part of the way we do things eventually.”

“Today, most things make life more complicated,” said Green, sitting on a sofa of his own design in his Commercial Street showroom. “I want to make things simpler and better.”

What he developed was a method of manufacturing furniture that uses interlocking joinery that allows the parts of the furniture to slide and lock into each other, using the inherent strength of the wood itself to hold the furniture together.

“What I stumbled upon was a system for creating structures which was unusual because it removed all bolts and other fasteners,” said Green.

He received a patent on his manufacturing process in 1995.

On March 23, Green Design Furniture was awarded the 2005 Governor’s Award for Business Excellence, an honor that recognizes Maine companies that demonstrate a high level of commitment to their community, employees and to manufacturing or service excellence.

“It’s a nice award because it’s about doing good … and not so much about doing well,” Green said.

Green Design Furniture is a green company, meaning it uses only sustainably harvested solid cherry from western Pennsylvania and attempts to reuse or recycle the byproducts from the shop. The company has supported numerous Maine non-profits through in-kind donations and regularly provides on-site lectures and hands-on tours to students at the Center for Fine Craftsmen in Rockport. Green employees 15 people, including nine in the shop, which produces less than a 1,000 pieces of furniture a year.

“A foundation for a healthy business is creating a healthy environment internally,” said Green, “making a place where there’s a sense of justice for the work people do.”

Like most careers, Green had a humble beginning in the furniture-making business. Green began dabbling in woodworking on his coffee table at home to relieve the stress of his first job as a preschool teacher. It was the late 1970s and Green had just graduated from Bowdoin College. He was mostly self-taught by reading books and tinkering. He had always been artistically inclined and said woodworking just came naturally.

“At the time there was a huge surge in craftsmanship … I got the bug,” Green said.

The hobby became a business when Green opened his first cabinetmaking shop in Topsham in 1979. He ended that after a few years and went to work as one of five cabinetmakers for Thomas Mosher.

It was around this time that Green began asking questions that led him to where he is now. Why are things made the way they are? Why are we using 200-year-old techniques to build 100-year-old styles? And why are handmade pieces so precious in this world and the other furniture looked down upon?

While working for Thomas Mosher as a cabinetmaker Green discovered the field of industrial design, a professional field that attempted to answer those very questions that had planted roots in his mind and spread. He left his job soon after and went to Brooklyn, New York, and attended a two-year master’s program in industrial design at the Pratt Institute. Green traveled to Brooklyn with the hope of being able to bring the two worlds of industrial and traditional values of craftsmanship together.

In the early 1990s Green returned to Maine to begin Green Design Furniture. The answers to the questions he had carried with him on his way to New York 10 years before had not necessarily been answered, but they had spawned a plan. He wanted to develop furniture that was simple, but also an improvement from the past. He wanted to utilize new technologies that made manufacturing so efficient. However, he also wanted to preserve the traditional values of hand craftsmanship.

Green plans to keep changing and adapting his furniture to the needs and lifestyles of his customers. His best selling line of all time is a table for a flat-screen television.

“I’m always looking forward to the hills we will climb,” said Green.

Doug Green with some of his furniture.