Rohlfs participated at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York in December 1900. The next year, he participated both as an exhibitor and as an organizer of the Pan-American Exposition in his hometown of Buffalo. The Exposition brought him fame. "So far as furniture is concerned, Buffalo can claim to hold the most original man in America," one enthusiastic Berlin commentator wrote about Rohlfs' work. Rohlfs is the only American furniture maker known to have participated in the International Exposition of Decorative Art in Turin in 1902. Perhaps as a result of the exposure he received there, Rohlfs became a member of the Royal Society of Arts in London.