Wood. Amazing stuff. It is such an interesting material; just a collection of cells forming the structures we know as trees. Those cells manifest in so many different ways: dark-light, hard-soft, creamy-coarse, strong-weak, plain-sexy… each trait as curious and interesting as the next. The range of colors is perhaps even more exciting. There is the pure, creamy, white of holly, and the rich, light-absorbing black of ebony, and between these two glorious extremes you’ll find almost every imaginable color of the rainbow.

Most of the work we have done in my shop over the last 40 years has been made using lumber cut from the 48 contiguous states. I set this limitation years ago simply because I found it much cheaper to buy domestic than imported lumber, so most of what you see in these pictures is domestic. Much of it is brazen in its figure, and some more ordinary. All of it is fascinating.