A Long Term Relationship Between Builder and Client

Year: Dining Table, 2014. Dining Chairs, 2025

Project: Brut Table and Chairs

Material: Douglas Fir from British Columbia, Powder Coated Mild Steel

The lumber came with the commission. Old growth Douglas Fir from the family's small town hockey rink — the place where they had raised their children. The boards had been pulled from the rink and left in the Saskatchewan sun and prairie winters for years, sun-bleached and weathered, waiting. The tabletop is 3" thick, the wood dating to 1942.

The brief was simple: build a table from these beams. The patina stayed. Sanding it back would have erased the story of what made the material worth preserving.

Inspiration for the central base came from the playful illusions of MC Escher. Seen from the right angle, the table appears to stand on a single leg, the top concealing where the base supports the tabletop. My cousin Braden, a skilled welder and artist, fabricated the steel frame at perfect right angles.

The name Brut followed naturally. Brutalist in material and geometry — raw wood, powder coated dimensional steel.

The chairs came a decade later, designed closely with the couple. Avid hosts who understood exactly what they needed: a low back that allows hours of comfortable sitting.

The seat substrate is a nine-ply Baltic birch insert with a semi-circle relief groove cut into the underside. The groove lets the plywood flex as the sitter shifts weight — the springy nature of the wood working like a suspension, closer in behaviour to formed plastic than to rigid timber. High-density foam and a forest green velvet chosen by the client sit above it.

The table was built from what the family had saved. The chairs were built around how they live.