Whorl Coffee Table

I wanted to create something organic. Something that would make people look at it and say "I didn't know wood could take such shape."

The main focus was the curved legs. I started with the top shape that I wanted and then I spent a large amount of time playing with prototypes to figure out the configuration and final shape for the legs.

Honestly, I have none. The majority of my work is one single piece. I will take what I learned with this piece and apply to the new ones.

The realization came earlier than the finished piece suggests, and it came from a scale model rather than from the wood itself. Ash is a material people associate with strength and rigidity, tool handles, sports equipment, structural components. The conventional language of ash is straight grain and straight lines. But ash also has a property that is less talked about: under the right conditions, it laminates and bends with a consistency that few hardwoods can match. I knew that technically. What I did not know, until I started working at scale, was what that property could actually become. I was playing with shape at small scale, working through forms with a model, when the geometry started to do something I had not planned for. The curve was not just bending, it was holding tension in a way that felt alive, almost like the form was resisting being still. That was the moment. Not when I decided the Whorl should look a certain way, but when the material, at scale, told me what it wanted to become. Technically, that moment meant the entire fabrication approach had to be developed from scratch. Bent lamination at the scale and degree of curve the Whorl required had no existing template in the studio's process. Every layer, every clamp, every stage of the bend had to be worked out specifically for this piece, informed by what the scale model had revealed. Creatively, it meant something more significant. It confirmed that the most interesting forms are not imposed on a material, they are found in it. Ash did not become flowing and organic because I forced it to. It became that way because, at the right scale and with the right process, that is what it was capable of all along. The Whorl exists because I was willing to keep looking until the material showed me what it could be. That is the discovery that meant the most. Not the shape itself, but the confirmation that the material always has more to say than its reputation suggests, if you are patient enough to listen for it.

The decision to anchor the Whorl in locally sourced ash and an eco-friendly hard-wax oil finish was not a constraint applied after the design was developed. It was present from the beginning, and it shaped the formal direction more directly than people might expect. Working with local materials means working with what is actually available, not an idealized version of a material sourced from anywhere in the world, but the specific character of ash grown and harvested in this region. That specificity becomes part of the design conversation. The grain, the density, the way this particular wood responds to bending and lamination, all of it informed what the Whorl could become. A different material, sourced differently, would have produced a different piece. The formal ambition of the Whorl is inseparable from the material decisions that grounded it. The hard-wax oil finish was chosen for the same reason the form was developed the way it was, because it respects what the material is. A finish that seals or obscures the wood would have worked against the entire premise of the piece, which is about revealing what ash is capable of, not disguising Hard-wax oil allows the grain, the movement, and the surface of the bent lamination to remain visible and tactile. It also ages well, deepening rather than degrading, which aligns with the standard every piece from the studio is held to. For North American furniture makers, I think the Whorl makes an argument worth considering: that formal ambition and responsible sourcing are not opposing forces that require trade-offs. The constraint of working with local, sustainably sourced material does not limit what is possible, it focuses it. Some of the most interesting design decisions on the Whorl emerged directly from working within that constraint, not despite it. There is a tendency in the industry to treat sustainability as a separate consideration from design ambition, something addressed after the form is decided. The Whorl is an argument for the opposite. When local sourcing and material honesty are part of the design conversation from the start, they do not restrict the work. They give it direction.

Bent wood is rare in North America because it requires experimentation that most production timelines do not allow. There was no standard process to follow for the Whorl, every variable had to be worked through from scratch. Lamination thickness was the first challenge. Thinner layers bend more readily but require more layers, more glue lines, and more clamping time. Thicker layers resist the curve and are prone to failure at the degree of bend the Whorl required. Finding the right balance took multiple attempts, some of which did not survive the process. The jigs had to be built specifically for this piece, since no existing jig could produce this geometry, an entire secondary design process nested inside the primary one. The vacuum mold gave the even pressure needed across a curved surface that conventional clamping could not achieve at this scale. What this opened up, beyond the Whorl itself, is a working method, a developed understanding of how ash behaves under lamination and vacuum forming that will inform every bent wood project that follows. For the broader furniture community, the case the Whorl makes is simple: the scarcity of bent wood practice isn't because the material can't do it. It's because few makers take the time to find out what it can. Wood treated this way stops behaving like something rigid and starts behaving like something with movement and intention, a demonstration of what the medium has always been capable of.