Every sculpture we ship started as a rough plank of North American black walnut, kiln-dried to about 8 percent moisture, sitting on a shelf in our small Hong Kong workshop.
I like to walk in on Monday morning and just look at the stack for a minute before I start. Each board has a different figure — some are almost jet-black in the heart, some run a warm honey-brown with a wide sap edge, some have a knot right where you don't want one. You learn to read them the way a butcher reads a side of beef.
Choosing the right board for the right piece
An Infinity Heart needs a long unbroken grain line — the ribbon reads better when there isn't a knot slicing through the top loop. A Bear Couple can hide a small character mark inside the pedestal. A Heart Tree Block is the opposite: it wants a wild grain, because the two intertwining trunks will look more alive in figured wood.
So I go through the stack, hold one up to the light, and match it to the order sheet. This match-making is maybe fifteen minutes per piece and it never gets faster. The wood tells me what it wants to be, not the other way around.
From board to blank
Once the board is picked, it goes onto the crosscut sled and I mill it down into a rough blank — usually about a centimetre bigger than the finished dimension on every side. Then it rests overnight. Walnut moves a little after you cut into it, and if you machine it right away, you'll chase warp for the next three days. Better to let it settle.
The next morning it goes to the CNC bed, where the sculptural form is roughed out by machine. But that's less than a third of the total work. The rest — chamfering the edges, hand-sanding through six grits, burn-engraving the names, hand-oiling twice, wrapping — is all done sitting at a bench with music on.
Why we tell you all this
Because the piece you receive isn't an item off a warehouse shelf. It's a specific board, from a specific tree, matched to your names on a specific week. When it arrives it will smell faintly of walnut oil and it will feel heavier than you expect. That weight is the point.
If you want to see the current batch on the bench, our Journal will keep publishing workshop notes as we finish orders. And if you're ready to commission a piece, the collection is here.