The Collection
The art of nature into function in your home.
Named pieces and one of one work built around exceptional material: live edge slabs, sculpted joinery, salvaged old growth redwood, wood paired with steel and glass. Designed and built in Santa Cruz, California, and shipped anywhere in the country.
Some material will not accept a normal form
Most of what comes through the shop wants to become a table, a cabinet, a door. Occasionally a slab arrives that resists all of it. The figure runs the wrong way for a top. The shape refuses a rectangle. The crotch or the burl or the void is the most interesting thing about the piece and hiding it would be the wrong decision.
Those pieces become this. Not decorative objects, and not furniture that happens to be attractive. Things you use every day that also refuse to disappear into the room.
What lives in the Collection today
Two things, right now. The Old Growth Collection, milled from salvaged coast redwood and priced individually from $6,400. And one of one sculptural work built the way the two pieces below were: around a piece of material that would not accept an ordinary form. A line of named, repeatable forms is in development and will join this page once the first one is chosen and priced.
See what is finished and ready to ship today
How these get made
Two ways. Sometimes the material comes first: something remarkable turns up, sits in the shop while the right form works itself out, and eventually gets built. Sometimes a client comes first, wanting something specific and unusual, and we go looking for the wood that will carry it. The second route takes longer and cannot be scheduled, because we will not force an ordinary slab into a design that needed an extraordinary one.
Where a piece calls for steel, glass, or stone, we bring in specialists we have worked alongside for years and manage the coordination ourselves. You deal with one shop.
Recent work in this category
- Live sycamore and steel coffee table. A slab with figure through the full thickness, wrapped around a blackened steel frame so the edge reads from every angle.
- Solid walnut platform bed. Sculpted joinery at every intersection, built so the frame is the design rather than a support for a mattress.
- Sculptural console and entry pieces. Usually where a slab too narrow for a dining top and too good to cut down ends up.
Commissioning a one of one piece
The six step process applies, with a longer and less certain first phase. Design work for a piece like this is substantial and begins as a paid design engagement, with the fee applied in full toward the commission. That structure exists because the drawing and specification for a one of one piece is real work whether or not the piece ultimately gets built.
Questions we get
The Collection, answered plainly.
What is the Trumanmade Collection?
Named and one of one pieces built around exceptional material, priced and ready to order or ready to ship, as opposed to a commission drawn from scratch for one room. A live sycamore slab wrapped around a steel frame is a coffee table, but describing it that way undersells what it is. These start from a specific piece of wood that will never exist again.
Can I commission a Collection piece, or do you only sell what you have made?
Both. Some pieces begin with material already in the shop and get built speculatively. Others begin with a client who wants something specific and unusual, and we go looking for the material that will support it. The second path takes longer and is less predictable, and we are clear about that before anyone puts down a deposit.
Do you work with metal, glass, or stone as well as wood?
Yes, in collaboration. Steel frames, glass, and stone all appear in this work. Wood is what we do ourselves; for the other materials we bring in people we have worked with for years and manage the coordination so you are dealing with one shop, not four.
What does a Collection piece cost?
It depends which part of the Collection. The Old Growth Collection publishes real prices, currently $6,400 to $14,800. A one of one piece has no useful range, because it is priced by what the material cost and how much work the form takes. What we can promise on either is a written, itemized estimate before any commitment.
One next step
Describe the piece nobody has built yet.
Rough sketches, reference photos, or a paragraph are all enough to start. Reply within one business day, or call (917) 415-4946.