Why we cut only the branches
A table shouldn't cost a tree. We take only the branches of the monkey-pod, and leave the tree standing to keep growing.
The rain tree — what we call monkey-pod — grows slowly and lives for generations. It seemed wrong to fell one just to make a side table. So we don't. We take only the branches, a metre or two at a time, and leave the tree to carry on.
Branches, not trunks
Cutting only the branches means the tree keeps growing, keeps shading the fields, keeps drawing carbon from the air. A single tree can give branches for years without ever coming down.
The record in the grain
Because each branch grew at its own pace, the heartwood runs from pale reddish-beige to deep brown, sometimes shot through with dark swirls — the slow record of a tree that took decades to grow. That variation isn't a flaw to be sanded away. It is the whole point. You can see the range most clearly across the twist end tables, where no two columns read the same.
We move with the tree, not against it. The wood waits, and so do we.
Somchai · finish carver
What happens to a branch after it is cut takes the better part of a year. We followed one through the workshop in how a branch becomes a table.
The workshop, in motion
A few short films from the bench — the same pieces, shaped and oiled by hand.
