Woodworking and Finishing
Happy Plant Stand Furniture and American Jitas
We love to create things from nature, whether it’s living or dead. One tells stories of the past and the present and what the future looks like, and the other tells stories of how they lived. Whether it is trying to keep nature alive or preserve it, we can find some of our lives mixed in with those stories.
We source our wood locally and generally we sift through rough milled wood and fine milled wood. We then select interesting pieces that tell interesting stories. It is wood Yamadori. Each piece of wood has been salvaged in Michigan due to disease, weather, or our growing society.
American Jitas are a form of the Japanese Jita(a board for bonsai or shitakusa). The Japanese take pretty burls of wood and finish them in a fashion thats aesthetically pleasing to the eye. An American Jita is taking a hunk of Native American hardwood that’s been milled in an American fashion and turning it something that’s aesthetically pleasing in a Bonsai display. We make both, Jitas in a more of a Japanese style and Jitas in an American fashion.
Birds Eye Maple Burl
Black Walnut triple trunk cookie
Birds Eye Maple Burl
Salvaged in Michigan and kilned dried. Birds Eye Maple refers to the pattern in the wood. It can be any species of Maple, or even other hardwoods, though very rare! Birds Eye Maple is considered the most rare wood in the world, but to have it in a Burl is even better.
Red Oak cutoff
Black Walnut triple trunk cookie
Birds Eye Maple Burl
The Oak was found in a cutoff bin at Live Edge Detroit. It had been salvaged in Oakland County and kiln dried with the other parts that were used for something else.
Black Walnut triple trunk cookie
Black Walnut triple trunk cookie
Black Walnut triple trunk cookie
The cookie was one of our first large purchases from Live Edge Detroit. It was a table we did when we first started woodworking. The before pictures of this cookie don’t do it justice, I refinished it to highlight all the wonderful little imperfections and perfections in this wood.
Black Walnut oval cookie
The BW was purchased as soon as it was put on the floor at Live Edge Detroit earlier in 2025. Its lack of imperfections caught my eye. No cracks or anything, just a beautiful specimen of BW. It turned out stunning.
Hunk of Cherry
We found the hunk of Cherry on the floor of a barn at Hidden Lake Gardens. Who knows when it was milled and how long it had naturally been drying there? It is obviously a cutoff with the big chain saw mark. Fun little project to see something kind of discarded and brought to back to life. A great example of wood Yamadori.
Honey Locust twin trunk small cookie
We received the Honey Locust round for putting Live Edge Detroit’s chop on some of their special furniture. It was a fair trade and this is the result on my end. Honey Locust is beautiful wood and the American Honey Locust Jita screams deciduous, especially in the fall.
Black Walnut small cookie
We bought the piece of BW at Live Edge Detroit. We used it to experiment with keeping the bark and finishing the bark. We were pleasantly surprised with the way the bark turned out and the dark richness the Jita produced.
More to come……
More to come……
