Allan Breed spent his early teens buying old furniture at flea markets and auctions and by 19 was employed by The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the restoration lab where he was able to examine some of the finest American pieces. After graduating from college with a degree in History he began restoring furniture for collectors and museums. In 1977 he built his first set of Chippendale chairs and has been reproducing American furniture using traditional tools and techniques ever since. Allan consults with collectors and dealers on the authenticity of early furniture and regularly lectures on furniture connoisseurship at musems and at the education departments of Christie's and Sotheby's in New York. He ehas contributed articles to The Journal of Antiques and Fine Arts, Art and Antiques, Early American Life and Fine Woodworking magazines and has appeared on the front and back covers of the latter ; Oct. '99, Sept./Oct. 2000 and the 25th Anniversary Issue.

Allan's work has been exhibited at The Currier Gallery of Art, The Wadsworth Athenaeum, The Portland Museum of Art and The DeCordova Museum, and his work can be seen in the permanent collections of The Peabody-Essex Museum, Strawbery Banke Museum, The Nightingale-Brown House in Providence and The Old South Meeting House in Boston. He has lectured on American furniture at Winterthur, Williamsburg, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Henry Ford Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.

Although Allan has taught the intricacies of period furniture making to collectors for over two decades, he took on the teaching of cabinetmaking to other woodworkers on a large scale in 1998 when he began traveling to Washington DC to teach a nine-member group from the Washington Woodworker's Guild to build Goddard-Townsend secretaries. Since then he has guided woodworkers from around the country through the intricacies of chairmaking, bombe chests and Rococo carving.