Creative woodworking has gotten complicated with all the YouTube tutorials and Instagram perfection flying around. As someone who’s been building furniture and experimenting in the shop for over two decades, I learned everything there is to know about finding your creative voice with wood. Today, I will share it all with you.
People ask how I got into woodworking expecting a simple origin story. The truth is messier — failed attempts, accidental discoveries, projects that taught more through their disasters than their successes. The creative part of woodworking developed slowly, and honestly, it’s still developing.
Copy First, Then Find Your Voice
Originality comes after competence. That’s something nobody tells you when you’re starting out. Before you can design furniture, you need to build furniture — lots of it. I spent years building other people’s designs from plans. Greene and Greene, Shaker, Arts and Crafts — didn’t matter. The vocabulary accumulated while my hands learned their skills. Looking back, those “unoriginal” years were the most important ones.
Constraints Breed Creativity
My best work often emerges from limitations, which sounds counterintuitive until you’ve lived it. A client needs a table for an awkward space. The only wood available has challenging grain. The budget won’t stretch for premium hardware. These constraints force solutions I wouldn’t have found otherwise, and they’ve produced some of my favorite pieces.
That’s what makes creative woodworking endearing to us furniture makers — the problem-solving is half the fun.
Mistakes Are Material
Probably should have led with this section, honestly. The project I’m proudest of started as a mistake. A glue-up failed, the panel split, and I was staring at what felt like wasted material and wasted time. Then I looked at the split differently — what if it could be a feature? I stabilized it with butterfly keys and let the repair become part of the design. Clients love that piece more than anything I’ve built “correctly.”
Material Leads the Way
The wood itself often knows what it wants to be. I’ve learned to inventory material before designing — let ideas emerge from what actually exists rather than starting with abstractions. A gorgeous piece of figured walnut doesn’t want to be hidden inside a drawer. That gnarly slab with the bark inclusion? It’s begging to become a live-edge shelf. Listen to what’s in front of you.
The Long Game
My style took fifteen years to develop, and I’m not done yet. If you’re feeling frustrated that your work doesn’t look “like you” yet, relax. Keep building. Keep paying attention to what excites you. The creative identity will emerge from the work, not the other way around. I promise it’s worth the wait.
