One workshop, four objects

Three of our serving boards and the steel table beside your sofa come out of the same building.

It's a small workshop in Akron, Ohio. Not a factory floor — a workshop. They work in two materials, wood and steel, and the same hands are behind both.

The boards

Solid walnut, maple and walnut together, or oak and cherry. Unstained and oiled, which is a decision rather than a shortcut. Stain sits on top of timber and hides it; oil goes in and lets the grain stay visible.

It also means the board ages in public. A year from now yours will look different to the one in the photograph, and that is the intended outcome.

The extra large is twenty-eight inches by ten — long enough for a whole dinner, not just the cheese. The maple and walnut is the everyday size, the one most people actually reach for. The oak or cherry is the small one, and it's the one that survives being given as a gift, because you don't have to guess anything about the recipient to know it'll get used.

Handles come in brass or black. That is the only decoration on any of them.

The table

Same workshop, different material. Laser-welded powder-coated steel, built at the height where a side table won't fit — it slides under the edge of a sofa so the top sits over your lap. That's the whole idea. It solves a specific, slightly annoying problem, and it does it in a material that will outlive the sofa.

Two hundred and sixty-five dollars is a lot for a small steel table. It is also the only thing in this shop that will still be structurally perfect in forty years, which makes it the cheapest per-year object we sell.

Why one workshop matters

Because a consistent standard is easier to trust than a consistent style. We didn't source four objects that happen to look related. We found people whose judgement we agreed with, and then took four things they made.

Everything ships from Akron on the ground. Three to four days.