I was digging through a cardboard box in the corner of my studio yesterday—one of those graveyard bins where I keep every failed prototype, each one tagged with a handwritten…

I have a shelf in my studio crowded with what most people would call trash: warped plywood scraps, failed joinery, and sketches that look more like frantic scribbles than “art.”…

I was staring at a pile of birch plywood scraps in my studio last Tuesday, thinking about a chair leg I’d spent three weeks obsessing over. Most design textbooks will…

I was staring at a prototype for a side table last Tuesday, surrounded by the usual graveyard of failed joints and rejected veneers, when I realized how much we overcomplicate…

I spent three weeks in 2004 obsessing over the grain of a walnut sideboard, only to realize the piece looked utterly dead because I had treated the lighting as an…

I spent three weeks in a drafty studio in coastal Maine last autumn, staring at a pile of reclaimed cedar and a set of sketches that felt entirely too “studio-made.”…

I remember sitting in a cramped studio in East London, staring at a stack of sketches for a chair that was mathematically destined to collapse. The client had sent over…

I spent most of my twenties watching people treat a client brief like a sacred text, something to be followed with a sort of fearful, religious precision. They think that…

I was staring at a mahogany sideboard last Tuesday, surrounded by the wreckage of a failed joinery attempt, realizing that my tape measure was lying to me. Most people think…

I was sitting on my studio floor last Tuesday, surrounded by a graveyard of failed joinery and half-finished sketches, when I realized I was doing it again: looking at a…