A former cowboy and ranch foreman is making furniture with heart in Tallahassee.
By Dave Barfield
When I first met Sean Coyne, someone suggested I look at his resume. The firstline read “Cowboy, Montana.” At about 6′ 7″ he was an imposing figure, and I knew I had to learn more about the cowboy working at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. In addition to being an actual, real-life cowboy, he worked as a ranch foreman managing Ed Harris’s ranch in Ocatè, New Mexico, worked on many films, including Ulee’s Gold with Jessica Biel and Peter Fonda, was a field ecologist in the Everglades doing research for Florida International University, and, on top of all that, now builds furniture by hand at his wood shop in Railroad Square. He seems like an almost mythical figure, our own version of Nick Offerman – a comparison which seems to annoy him, although it’s spectacularly hard to tell if Sean is annoyed. The more time I spend with Sean Coyne, his wife Kristen, and his two daughters, the more I realize what a rarity he is in our time.
