One-person shop. Black walnut and live-edge maple. Dining tables, floating shelves, and heirloom jewelry boxes — shaped by hand planes and an unhurried stubbornness about joinery.
THE WORK // 2024–2026
PORTFOLIO
GALLERY
Tap any image to open the full process breakdown — species, dimensions, joinery type, and finish used.
01 // DINING
Black Walnut
Dining Table
Eight seats. One slab. No apology.
Species
Black Walnut
Year
2025
Joinery
Drawbored mortise & tenon
Finish
Three coats Rubio Monocoat
02 // SHELVING
Live-Edge
Floating Shelves
Hard maple. Blind dado. Ten years minimum.
Species
Hard Maple
Year
2025
Joinery
Blind dado with steel rod hidden mount
Finish
Osmo Polyx-Oil
03 // BOXES
Heirloom
Jewelry Box
Hand-cut dovetails. Silk-fit lid. Forty years.
Species
Black Walnut + Figured Maple
Year
2026
Joinery
Hand-cut through dovetails
Finish
Shellac sealer
THE CRAFT // PROCESS
HOW IT
GETS MADE
LOG SELECTION
The slab
chooses you.
Every commission starts at the sawyer's yard — not a catalog. I walk slabs until one stops me. A crotch figure in the walnut. A mineral streak in the maple. A crack that'll be a feature, not a flaw, once it's filled with black-dyed epoxy. The wood decides the table's character before the first pencil mark.
HAND TOOL WORK
Quiet work
makes loud
pieces.
No router tables. No CNC. Mortises are chopped with a mallet and a 3/4" bench chisel. Dovetails are scribed with a marking gauge and cut to the line. A hand plane leaves a surface so flat a straightedge can't find daylight. The marks of the maker stay in the wood — read them if you know what to look for.
JOINERY
Cut once.
Fit it
until it sings.
A joint that fits by hand — not by machine tolerance — has a particular feel when it closes. The wood compresses slightly, the grain locks, and the whole assembly becomes stiffer than the sum of its parts. That's what you're paying for when you commission a piece. Not the finish. The fit underneath.
WHAT THEY SAY
HEARD IN
THE FIELD
We specified the walnut dining table for a Montclair renovation. The clients haven't stopped talking about the joinery. I've since sourced three more pieces for other projects. The lead times are long and worth every week.
Priya Mehta
Principal, Mehta Residential Design
New York, NY
I've owned a lot of furniture. This is the first piece I've ever genuinely studied. The drawbored tenons are visible from one angle — I leave that side facing the window so the light catches them in the morning.
Daniel Okafor
Homeowner
Asheville, NC
The Build Journal PDF changed how I think about documenting my own work. I've been making furniture for eight years and I'd never written down a finish schedule. Now I keep one for every commission.
Tomás Vega
Furniture Maker
Portland, OR