A little bit of nonsense goes a long way

Andon style lanterns in makore, cumaru and sapele with handmade washi featuring bark and leaves. Electrical cord hidden in leg. Original designs. Traditional techniques. Handmade. No nails or screws.

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I It had taken the better part of a month to walk the three hundred or so miles between White Pass and Olallie Lake, where my next support package would be waiting. But when I finally showed up at the little bait and tackle shop—way up in the Cascades of central Oregon—I was told it hadn’t yet arrived. It would be another week before the next batch of mail was brought up, possibly longer.  I…

Those had been our only real pieces of furniture. A pair of chairs and a table. It doesn’t get much simpler. Two straight backed chairs and a matching table, all first hand and painted the color of new bricks. I’m guessing they’d been made of pine, with half inch thick plywood for the seats and top. There was just enough room on the table for a couple of place settings, a pot of coffee, some…

The Box Seller Behind the souks of Marrakech, beyond the bustle of the stalls and the incessant din of voices haggling over the prices of carpets, tea sets and slippers, away from the tourists, con men and monkey handlers, lie the workshops of the artisans. The metalsmiths, carpenters, and leather workers, all working side by side in a hive of cramped little stalls and alcoves. Down winding…

Billy Billy worked as a forester at the Agricultural college in Heilongjiang province, where his father had worked before him. He planted trees and dug trenches, maintained the flowering borders and unclogged the fountains. He enjoyed his work and adored his wife and always made time to play with his son. In short, he was one of the very few real men I’ve had the pleasure of knowing in my life,…

Art school had been enjoyable enough and Maggie (her parents had named her Meiying) felt she’d made the most of it. Perhaps she hadn’t seized the day in the same way her friends had done, but she’d never really enjoyed that sort of thing. She was an attractive young woman, and had certainly been invited to all the same parties, but to her it was important that the college experience be more about…

He was sick of it, sick and tired of hearing them always going on and on about the same old thing, how they were doing something different, something new and modern when really the whole painting thing was washed up and had been for a long time. He felt genuinely sick and tired and fed up and more than a little drunk.  “It’s too much about the eye,” the artist said. “You’d think the world was…

It had been dismally cold and grey, but that morning the sun had come out and was burning through the fog, and Gwynn delighted in the gentle warmth of it as he crunched across the frozen grass. Today he would make a chair. Of course there were other things that needed doing. There were always plenty of other things to do. But he had decided that this would be the day and that everything else…

The architect stood looming over his desk, his sturdy silhouette framed by an enormous window. Pencil in hand, he thought about a chair. “It is in the nature of man to want to design something he can be remembered for. A bridge. A cathedral. A great ship. But what of the spoon or the humble hatstand? What of the chair?” The architect tried to imagine the first chair, that first seat used to raise…

Makomo sat in the shade of the big tree and waited for the boys to arrive. The ground had been swept clean and his tools sharpened, and although the joints in his hands felt very stiff he knew that the best remedy for the pain was work. And there would be plenty of that soon enough. He had been given the honor of carving Oba’s ceremonial throne. All the men in his family had been woodcarvers.…

Sapele and lacewood finished with a garnet shellac. The commission was to make a structure to house five medicine balls for the client’s home gym. It needed to be functional enough to survive daily use yet beautiful enough to be on permanent display in an elegant West Hollywood apartment. When properly lit, the sapele takes on an almost lacquered appearance. This is the third piece…

Sapele frame with lower panels in African mahogany. Upper panels are basswood lattices and Japanese mulberry paper. This central room had once been the client’s dining area, but on account of the pandemic was converted into an at-home gym. Not wanting to give the space over entirely to this new purpose, we brainstormed ways in which to hide the equipment from view, while still maintaining an…

This piece was designed and built for a client’s home gym. The structure, which has only three sides and a top, slides over a rack of dumbbells. When not being used in this way, the dais can be used as a seat. The goal when starting out was to enable the client (a personal trainer) to conceal his workout equipment so that the gym could double as a living/entertaining space. As well as the dias,…

Custom butsudan in red oak, African mahogany and curly maple. Lamps designed specifically for this butsudan, made extra tall to display vases containing evergreen…

Custom Butsudan in alder, sapele and bubinga.

No nails. No screws. Handmade using traditional Japanese hand tools.

Gold leaf backing

Drawer upholstered in fabric featuring traditional Japanese asanoha motif

Inner doors with six asanoha leaf patterns

Tansu cabinet with two sliding doors.

Pair of mini andon lanterns (wood and paper)

Meditation stool (seiza bench) in curly maple