The Job That Lost Money
I remember sitting in my studio three years ago, staring at a prototype chair that had just cost me four months of rent and a significant amount of my dignity.…
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The Design Improved by a Limit
I have a shelf in the back of my studio, tucked behind the heavy slabs of walnut, that serves as a graveyard for “perfect” ideas. It’s filled with joints that…
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A Tool Shapes What You Imagine
I was sitting on my studio floor last Tuesday, staring at a pile of rejected walnut joints, when I realized how much we lie to ourselves about our gear. There…
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What I Do While Glue Dries
I was standing in a dusty corner of a workshop in Milan last spring, waiting for a CNC machine to finish a complex routing job, when I realized how much…
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Looking at Other People’s Work
I was sitting in my studio last Tuesday, staring at a pile of rejected chair legs—each one marked with a handwritten note explaining why the joinery failed or the curve…
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Surface Preparation Decides the Finish
I was staring at a walnut sideboard last Tuesday, a piece I’d spent three weeks perfecting, only to realize the oil finish was highlighting every single microscopic scratch I’d been…
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Finding Other People Who Do This
I spent three years in my early twenties thinking that finding my people meant paying a monthly subscription to some polished, high-end co-working space with ergonomic chairs and artisanal espresso.…
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Overlapping Three Pieces
I remember sitting in my studio three years ago, surrounded by the scent of freshly sawn walnut and the mounting dread of a calendar that looked more like a battlefield…
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Hide Glue and Why Some Makers Insist
I was staring at a seventeenth-century walnut chair in a workshop in Florence, watching a master restorer work with a small, steaming pot of animal protein, and it hit me:…
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Hammer Veneering With Hide Glue
I was staring at a ruined slab of walnut last Tuesday, my hands shaking slightly, wondering why I hadn’t just used a machine press like a sane person. Most people…
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