My Story: A Commitment to Craft and Place

I came to furniture making later than many of my peers—no lineage guiding me toward the trade. In my early twenties, I was headed toward a predictable career when a detour carried me onto the small ferry to Lummi Island for an unpredicted apprenticeship with master furniture maker Alan Rosen.

That year turned into thirty. I never left.

Lummi Island Ferry and Mt Baker

The apprenticeship revealed what I hadn’t realized I was searching for: a craft that engages both hands and mind—creativity bounded by material limits, structure guided by mathematical precision. The island offered something equally unexpected: a community and a deep sense of place.

In 2003, I built my workshop with windows facing the Salish Sea. The shifting light, the weather rolling through the strait, the steady rhythm of tides and seasons—these have been my quiet mentors ever since.

Early Days—Milling a Large Slab Destined to be a Tabletop

A Pacific Rim Design Language

My work is informed by woodworking traditions that value material honesty, refined joinery, and the expressive potential of negative space. Each piece begins as a conversation with the wood itself: grain, texture, and natural character advising form rather than being concealed by it.

It’s a biophilic approach—furniture that strengthens the connection between interior spaces and the natural world through coastal curves, tactile surfaces, and proportions that allow the eye to rest.

Joinery stays visible—wedged tenons, bridle joints, castle joints—celebrating structure instead of hiding it. Textural elements make their way in: hand-hewn surfaces influenced by Coast Salish carving tools, shoreline stones gathered outside the shop, and occasionally the controlled use of fire through the Japanese technique of shou-sugi-ban. Finishes remain simple—oil and wax that let the wood deepen over time.

Texture with Crooked Knife

Shou-Sugi-Ban

The island’s weather and geology shape my aesthetic as much as any teacher. The horizontal sweep of the Salish Sea, the slow erosion of stone, the interplay of forest, sky, and shoreline—these appear in the work through proportion and restraint. I favor openness over mass, subtlety over spectacle, and designs that feel grounded and enduring, like the landscape itself.

Salish Sea During a Winter Gale—a stones throw from my shop

Building a Life in Craft

Now in the fourth decade of this path, my work spans residential commissions and public projects—from the 36-foot mahogany bar at Uisce Irish Pub to custom dining furniture for the James Beard Award winning Willows Inn, and a decade-long commission creating liturgical pieces for a regional synagogue.

Ark Delivery Day - The Culmination of a 5 year Commission for a Local Synagogue 

My wife Samya and I raised our twin boys here, sailing the islands and exploring the mountains. Living in one place for so long shapes everything—the landscape seeps into the work, the community becomes part of the process, and the practice deepens in ways that wouldn’t have been possible elsewhere.

What began as a one-year experiment became a way of life—and the foundation for every piece that leaves my shop.

Calm Salish Sea at Legoe Bay Outside My Studio