Taking Things Away at the End
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…
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Why I Am Still Doing This
I was staring at a half-finished walnut sideboard last Tuesday, surrounded by the sawdust and the quiet, suffocating weight of a decision I’d made three hours earlier. Most people think…
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Building a Piece Over Six Weekends
I remember sitting on a sawdust-covered floor in my first studio, staring at a half-finished walnut sideboard that looked more like a pile of kindling than furniture. I had followed…
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Checking Before It Is Too Late
I spent three years in a studio where the “quality control” process was nothing more than a high-priced consultant with a clipboard and a penchant for expensive jargon. They treated…
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The Confidence to Leave It Plain
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…
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How Light Falls on a Surface
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…
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Designing for One Room
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.”…
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How Accurate Is Accurate Enough
I remember standing over a prototype of a walnut sideboard back in my early studio days, the smell of sawdust and linseed oil thick in the air, staring at a…
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The Day It Leaves the Workshop
The smell of sawdust is usually a sign of progress, but tonight, it just smells like a deadline. I’m sitting on my workshop stool, staring at a walnut sideboard that…
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Sharpening as Part of the Work
I remember sitting on the floor of my first studio, surrounded by half-finished walnut joinery and a mounting sense of failure because my chisel felt like a blunt spoon. I…
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