03 — Material
Every piece starts as a board. What the grain does next is the point, so we cut and finish to show it rather than cover it.
Deep and chocolate-dark, with open pores you can see across a room. This is the board wood — charcuterie, cutting boards, trays. The grain does the decorating, so most walnut pieces get very little engraving.
Pale and even, with grain fine enough that it never competes with a line. It takes an engraving cleanly and holds a sharp edge at small sizes, which is exactly why the street maps and skylines live here.
Warm red-brown with visible growth rings, and the only one of the four that keeps changing after it leaves the shop — cherry darkens for years with light. The piece you hang this month is not quite the piece you’ll have in five.
Open-grained and strong, with a long straight figure that suits big flat panels. Every subway sign is cut from premium ash — Cabin Life, Lake Life, Up North, Motown and Corktown — in three sizes.
Walnut, maple and cherry shown as planed blanks from the shop. Ash shown as a finished sign.
Process
The fine work — skylines, street maps, lettering, badge detail. Cuts a clean dark line into pale stock, which is why most engraved pieces are maple.
Hand-worked scenes with a softer edge than a laser gives, like the evergreens on the oar earrings. Slower, and it shows.
Poured color set into the grain and leveled flush: half & half faces, resin rivers through a board, aqua against dark walnut.
