Silas Kopf (b. 1949, Warren, PA) graduated from Princeton University in 1972 with a degree in architecture, but he soon after found his passion for designing and crafting furniture. For two years, he apprenticed with Wendell Castle, the renowned art furniture maker. In 1988, Kopf received a Craftsman's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, enabling him to study traditional marquetry methods at the École Boulle in Paris. Subsequently, he traveled to Italy, England, and Sweden to expand his understanding of his craft and of the role of marquetry in European decorative art. In 2008, he published A Marquetry Odyssey, an introduction to his own work and to the world of marquetry.
Kopf's work is found in public and private collections around the world. Selected collections include the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smith College Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.