Murphy’s work will be featured in an upcoming installment of “Craft in America” on PBS.

“Everything full size is made in miniature by someone somewhere in the world,” said Astoria artisan Mark Murphy, who has spent the last 40 years making exquisite miniature furniture.

Having grown up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in what he calls an athletic family (his father was an NBA referee), he wasn’t particularly enamored of sports and spent much of his time enjoying nature or, as he said, “making a mess in the basement.”

Murphy’s messing about on art projects led him to study at Ohio State University, with an emphasis on sculpture, and to later earn a bachelor’s degree in woodworking and furniture design at the Philadelphia College of Art.

After college, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked for an architectural firm making landscape scale models. It was in the Bay Area, at a scale model store, that he met renowned miniature house builder, Pam Throop.

“I was enthralled with her houses,” Murphy said. The two became friends and he soon was recruited to make furniture pieces for her period American and English dwellings.

“That was it. I was hooked,” Murphy said. “I loved working with Pam and she encouraged me to keep going. I mostly kept to American styles early on, especially the Midwest Shaker and Arts & Crafts styles that I was familiar with. She also encouraged me to show at miniature conventions and that changed my life. I met so many wonderful people who were doing marvelous things in miniature from jewelry to … oh, everything.

“Most of us work at home alone,” he continued, “so it was amazing to meet others who were as passionate about what they were doing as I was.”

Those connections led Murphy to collaborate with several other miniature artists who embellish or add decorative touches to Murphy’s furniture and tableaus, including painters Mary Grady O’Brien and Patricia Hartman; petit point artist Patricia Richards; Lee-Ann Wessel, who creates pottery and porcelain; and Annelle Ferguson, who provides needlepoint tapestries, upholstery and rugs.

In 2000, Murphy was asked to teach at the International Guild of Miniature Artisans at the Maine Maritime Academy, in Castine, Maine. The Guild School, held every year in June, offers opportunities for miniaturists to share with others their skills and techniques, and to display their artistry.

“I was pretty shy and a nervous wreck the first year,” said Murphy. “My friend, Mary Grady O’Brien, urged me on.

I was familiar with the Guild School since I had attended it many years before, but still, I was anxious. I’ll never forget the enthusiasm that greeted me. It was overwhelming. I never felt so appreciated. I had truly found my family.

This coming June will be the 24th year that Murphy teaches there. “My passion now is with Japanese furniture,” he said. “The lines are so clean and simple, very much like Shaker designs.”

Simple the lines may be, but the intricacy and attention to detail is extraordinary.

An exciting turn of events that Murphy never saw coming was an invitation to be in a featured segment on the PBS show, “Craft in America.”

To see Murphy in action, and to view some of his miniatures, the show will be available for streaming beginning Dec. 1. The television version of the show will air on Dec. 29.

Mark Murphy miniatures

Segment featuring Mark Murphy will be available for streaming beginning Dec. 1 on the PBS app or at www.pbs.org/craftinamerica

The television spot will air Dec. 29

To view more of Murphy’s miniatures, or to order, visit www.markmurphyminiatures.com