## Frontispiece

Fig. i · The workshop at Millbrook Lane, seven in the morning.

Four objects this season. Oak, walnut, ash. Everything here is cut, fitted, and finished by two pairs of hands in one room, and priced to say so.

Part One

## The Collection

Plate 01 · photographed against the shop wall, unstyled.

Plate 01

### Low Chair

A chair for sitting low and long. The seat is woven in unbleached cane over an oak frame; the back is shaped with a spokeshave to meet the spine, not the eye.

Materials
  Quartersawn white oak, cane
Joinery
  Wedged through-tenons
Finish
  Hard-wax oil
Dimensions
  W 640 × D 780 × H 690 mm
Lead time
  8 weeks
Price
  $2,400

Plate 02 · photographed against the shop wall, unstyled.

Plate 02

### Long Credenza

Casework in walnut, carcase dovetailed at each corner. The doors slide on waxed oak runners; there is no hardware to catch a sleeve. Interior in ash, left bright.

Materials
  Black walnut, ash interior
Joinery
  Through-dovetails, sliding doors
Finish
  Oil and wax
Dimensions
  W 1800 × D 450 × H 640 mm
Lead time
  12 weeks
Price
  $6,800

Plate 03 · photographed against the shop wall, unstyled.

Plate 03

### Staked Stool

Three legs, because floors are not flat. The seat is saddled by hand from a single ash plank; the legs are riven, not sawn, so the grain runs their full length.

Materials
  Ash, riven and shaved
Joinery
  Staked, wedged
Finish
  Raw, burnished
Dimensions
  Ø 340 × H 450 mm
Lead time
  3 weeks
Price
  $480

Plate 04 · photographed against the shop wall, unstyled.

Plate 04

### Paper Lamp

Steel where it must be, paper where it can be. The stem is blackened bar stock on a cast base; the shade is kozo paper on an oak ring, and it warms a room, not a page.

Materials
  Blackened steel, kozo paper, oak
Joinery
  Turned collar, set screw
Finish
  Wax over blackening
Dimensions
  Ø 320 × H 1420 mm
Lead time
  5 weeks
Price
  $1,150

Part Two

## On Joinery

Fig. ii · Paring a dovetail shoulder. The last two strokes matter most.

We use glue, and we do not trust it. Every joint in this catalogue would hold with the glue omitted: the tenon is wedged, the dovetail is tapered, the stool leg swells against its socket as the seat dries around it.

The mortise and tenon is the oldest agreement in woodwork: one piece gives way so another can enter, and both are stronger for it. The pattern running through this catalogue is that joint, drawn plainly. We chose it over a photograph of one because the idea is the point.

Wood moves. A tabletop grows and shrinks a few millimetres every year, forever. Good joinery does not fight this; it leaves room. Buttons, slots, elongated holes; the quiet allowances are the craft.

Part Three

## The Workshop

Fig. iii · The showroom, one room over from the bench room.

Oxbow occupies a former cider barn at 6 Millbrook Lane, ten minutes from the river whose bend named us. The bench room holds two benches, a wall of clamps, and the timber for the year, stickered and drying. The showroom holds whatever is finished and nothing that is not.

We buy logs, not lumber, from two sawyers within an hour of the shop, and we dry them ourselves for eighteen months. It is the slowest possible way to work and the only one that lets us choose a board for the chair it will become.

Founded
  2014
Makers
  Two
Timber drying
  18 months
Showroom
  Sat 10 to 4, or by note

Part Four

## The Makers

Fig. iv · at the bench, one window, no styling.

### Naomi Alcott

Founder · chairs, weaving

Trained as a boatbuilder; still lofts every chair full-scale on the shop floor. Keeps the cane damp and the jokes dry.

Fig. v · at the bench, one window, no styling.

### Edmund Tate

Casework, finishing

Thirty years at the bench. Grades every board in the yard by ear as much as by eye, and has never once rushed an oil coat.

Part Five

## Commissions

Half of each year’s bench time is kept for commissioned work: dining tables, benches, the occasional bed. The process has four movements and no surprises.

1. I

   ### Enquiry

   Write with a room, a use, and a budget. Photographs help. We answer within the week, plainly, including when the answer is no.

2. II

   ### Drawings

   Full-scale drawings and a wood sample, posted to you. Two rounds of revision are included. A third of the price reserves the bench.

3. III

   ### Making

   Six to fourteen weeks, depending on the work. You receive one photograph, midway, from the bench. The piece is better than the updates would be.

4. IV

   ### Delivery

   Blanket-wrapped in our own van within two hundred miles; crated in ash offcuts beyond. We place it, level it, and take the wrappings home.

The book opens for autumn on the first of September. Write to bench@oxbow.example.

Appendix

## Care & Delivery

### Care of oiled wood

Dust with a dry cloth. Wipe spills when you notice them, not urgently. Once a year, a coin-sized pool of the oil we send with each piece, spread thin and buffed after twenty minutes. No silicone polish, ever; it cannot be undone.

Walnut lightens toward honey in sunlight; oak deepens. Neither is damage. A ring left by a glass will usually rub out with the oil; a dent can be raised with a damp cloth and a warm iron. Anything worse, bring it back. Repairs to our own work are free for as long as we exist.

### Delivery

Within two hundred miles of the workshop we deliver ourselves, blanket-wrapped, and place the piece where it will live. Farther afield, work travels crated in ash offcuts with a carrier we have used for nine years. Crates are returnable; most come back as firewood, which is also fine.

Lead times in this catalogue are honest, not optimistic. When a date moves, you hear it from us first, with a reason.