COMMISSIONED WOODWORK · NETTLEFOLD · THE WAITING LIST IS HONEST
Furniture with your rooms already in it.
Staveborn is a one-bench studio for commissioned tables, libraries and boot rooms — drawn against the wall lengths you actually have, built from boards chosen with you at the yard, and delivered by the same pair of hands that cut the first joint.
One bench · six commissions a year · Lic. FC-61044 · Nettlefold and the hill roads
Two commission slots remain for spring delivery — the autumn list opens in June. bench@staveborn.example
A small shop on purpose
Six commissions a year is not a backlog — it is the number of pieces one bench hand can finish at the standard the studio name claims. Everything is cut from stock you have touched, finished with oil you can spell, and drawn to measurements taken twice: once with the tape, once with the room empty and the door shut.
How a commission runs
A conversation at the house, drawings you keep, a bench week you can visit, and a delivery day that ends with the piece standing where it was measured. Deposits are a third; the balance leaves your hand when the piece enters the room.
What it costs to ask
Nothing. Drawings and a fixed quote are part of the first visit, and they are yours whoever builds the piece — more than one commission on this page started as a drawing another shop was given.
Tables & case pieces
Dining tables to seat the family you actually have, sideboards to the wall’s true length, benches and beds. Walnut, cherry and quartersawn oak, oiled — never polyurethane.
Libraries & boot rooms
Built-in shelving scribed to plaster, window seats with lids that stay up, and mudroom walls sized to actual boots and actual backpacks — measured on a school morning if you will allow it.
Wood countertops
Edge-grain and end-grain tops in maple, walnut and reclaimed fir, sized to the cabinet and finished for cutting on. Leave the sink cutout to us; bring the faucet template.
Repair & re-fit
One table leg, one house move, one inherited dresser that deserves better than a stripping dip. Small work is booked between commissions — it is how most of the big work begins.
Every photograph is a delivered commission, taken in the client’s light on the day the piece entered the room. The drawing is pinned beside it in the studio album — what was promised is what stands.
The path
From conversation to delivery day
Twelve to sixteen weeks for most pieces, longer if the wood is still a tree. The studio sends photographs at every stage that matters — you watch the piece decide what it wants to be.
Week 0
The house visit
Measurements taken twice, boards from the yard rack spread on your floor, and a conversation about who the piece is for. Drawings follow within the week.
Week 2
Drawing & quote
One round of changes included, then a fixed price and a delivery window. A third on deposit books the bench.
Weeks 3–12
The bench
Stock milled and rested, joinery cut, piece assembled dry before glue. Visitors welcome — the kettle is on the planer table.
Delivery day
The room, with it in
Carried in, set level, oiled one last time in place. The balance is due when you sit down at it.
We asked for a table that could survive four grandchildren. What arrived survives them and will be arguing with the floor about level in 2120. It is the best object in the house and the house knows it.
The studio is open to visitors on Friday afternoons — the kettle and the offcuts bin are both large. bench@staveborn.example
The boot room was measured on a school morning, backpacks included. Nothing in it has moved, sagged, or forgiven a wet coat it could not dry.
I brought Staveborn a photograph of my grandmother’s dresser and a drawer that had died in 1998. Both came back better than the photograph.
The drawings came before the deposit ask, and they were ours to keep. We had nowhere else to take them after that — which I suspect is the whole idea.
Fair questions
Why only six commissions a year?
Because the bench is one bench and the name on it is one name. A second bench would double the output and halve the standard, and the waiting list — honest, dated, and never padded — is the mechanism that keeps both intact.
What wood should we choose?
The one the room asks for, which we work out with the yard rack spread on your floor. Walnut for rooms that want weight, cherry for rooms that will darken around it, quartersawn oak for grandchildren and spilled wine in equal measure.
Can you match a piece we already own?
Usually to the eye, sometimes to the molecule. Boards from the same region and era get close; the honest answer comes after the yard visit, with your piece photographed and the rack beside it.
Do you take rush work?
No, and pretending otherwise would be the only dishonest thing on this page. For a genuine deadline — a memorial, a wedding — say so in the first conversation and the calendar will either bend honestly or decline politely.
The furniture is the guarantee
Everything leaves the bench built to outlive its first owner. If a joint I cut fails in your lifetime, it comes back to this bench and leaves it right — no invoice, no debate.
The studio ledger
Friday afternoons the phone is answered from the bench