#woodworking

#woodworking

Most dinnerware is designed to disappear. Plates, bowls, chopsticks - they accumulate in cabinets and get used without being noticed, which is fine until you eat a meal set on something that was actually made with care. Then the gap becomes impossible to close. Japan produces more objects in that second category than anywhere else on earth, not because of tradition for its own sake, but because the Japanese design standard demands that everyday tools perform well and look considered doing it.

Artists have been raiding the toolkits of the Old Masters with new urgency of late, borrowing and reworking Renaissance and Baroque compositional drama, symbolism, and increasingly, their labor-intensive methods. While much of that renewed interest has centered on oil painting, this May three artists—Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Bühler-Rose, and Nick Doyle—are pointing to another Renaissance inheritance: the decorative woodworking traditions of intarsia and marquetry.

There is a moment at dusk when the boundary between sky and water dissolves. The sun hangs low, the tide softens, and the surface of the sea becomes a trembling mirror, holding light in fragments. Studio Haran's Sandscape Collection seems to trap that exact instant. These sculptural luminaires do not simply resemble waves. They resemble the reflection of something luminous hovering above them, as though the moon or sun has descended and dissolved into ripples.

Sometime in the past couple of months, I saw a post by Allie Ostrander on Instagram. Allie is a well-known runner who represents Oiselle on the track, road, and trail, and in her post, she pointed out that you can run a race and a workout at the same pace, and yet the two efforts can feel remarkably different. One feels grueling, the other feels like flow state.

Tech moves fast, breaks things, ships updates, iterates. The entire industry is built on the assumption that this year's product will be obsolete by next year, and that's fine because next year's version will be better anyway. Then you see someone in Fukui Prefecture spending twenty minutes hand-sanding a single wooden keyboard key, checking it by touch, and the whole paradigm feels suddenly optional.

Knowing how to cut a clean, precise hole in wood is a skill every DIYer should have in their toolkit.

Artists making do in their New York apartments is not uncommon, but most do not install a woodworking studio at home. You need a large space with good ventilation - that's rare and usually expensive. Plus, you need neighbors who can tolerate the sound of power tools going for hours at a time. A one-bedroom rental in a townhouse doesn't usually meet these criteria.

"What we had intended to really just be almost like a home office where we wouldn't even have customers, we now have the space for it. So we decided to turn Build-a-Chair into this Build-a-Home concept," Carraway explained. "You could truly walk and be like, 'you know what? I wanna build a side table,' and then either pick from our suite of things to start with and customize it, or you can come to us with a totally custom idea."

De Lara transforms everyday tools, plants, and furniture into anthropomorphic and surreal forms. These works act as vessels of memory, resilience, and humor, but also as pointed reflections on the immigrant experience, queer identity, and the liminal space of DACA status, the temporary US policy that offers young undocumented immigrants protection from deportation and the ability to work legally, though without a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

Eoin Reardon, aka @pintofplane, is a traditional woodworker who hails from Crossbarry, Co Cork. The 24-year-old craftsman has 1.67m YouTube subscribers, 3.4m followers on TikTok, and 575,000 followers on Instagram. He only taught himself the basics of woodworking during the pandemic - and then went on to build a worldwide following by sharing videos of his passion on social media. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news

Mango. It might sound a little unusual, but the wood of the mango tree is attractive, hardwearing, and relatively cheap. So, opting for mango over a more expensive hardwood might allow you to be more creative than you expected in your kitchen design.

Stenson emphasizes emotional perception through animals in his carvings, portraying the sweet slyness of a fox or a charming bear proud of its fresh catch.

The Ace Makerspace Woodworking and Metalworking experience includes a one-hour certification class that covers shop etiquette, safe tool use, and space sharing guidelines.

Fiskars makes modern, functional axes that'll chop wood well and hold up with minimal to no maintenance. This splitting axe is a great entry point into the world of axes.

The connection between craftsperson and wood is immediate. This is how I found my true identity as it mirrors my life's journey of self-discovery.