It sounds great at first: Irion Co. Furniture Makers (furnituremakers.com), has a yearlong backlog for its flawless, handmade reproductions of Revolutionary War-era highboys, chests, and tables, some of which sell for more than $100,000 apiece. Owned by Kendl Monn (shown here at his shop in Christiana, Pa.), Irion's painstaking restorations of original works are on display at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. One secretive Pennsylvania plutocrat has even hired Irion to replicate 80 of the greatest pieces of American furniture ever made for display in his baronial mansion outside Philadelphia. That project alone should keep Irion's half-dozen craftsmen busy for the next two years. But life at Irion is less rosy than it sounds...