Philip Shelton

I char­ac­ter­ize my furni­ture design style as wood-forward; show­cas­ing the wood for what it is, without dimin­ish­ing or masking it. The wood itself is the center­piece and the aesthetic of my work. 

Wood is a living medium, and the furni­ture maker an artist who works that life into new forms. Furni­ture making is not a static activ­ity, with dead inputs and stag­nant outcomes. In craft­ing new forms of being from living mediums, I strive to imbue each piece with the honor and respect that the trees deserve as they’re morphed into becom­ing part of our daily lives in our built spaces. After all, furni­ture is but one possi­bil­ity in the lifes­pan of a tree.

Well-built furni­ture grows a commu­nity around it. I work with clients to design and build custom and semi-custom furni­ture that brings people together to enjoy our curated spaces. Life’s memo­ries are made in inter­ac­tion with our built envi­ron­ments and high quality, beau­ti­ful and tactile furni­ture brings pieces of the natural world into our everyday lives.

My furni­ture is built from solid wood, using tradi­tional joinery methods and build­ing tech­niques when applic­a­ble. It is intended to be used; to be sat on or gath­ered around, to hold you while you sleep and store your precious objects. The quality of mate­ri­als and forms of construc­tion are chosen to last forever, to truly be heirloom pieces. 

Being based on the Olympic Penin­sula, I am blessed with a wide range of high quality furni­ture grade wood from hyper local sources. When­ever possi­ble, I work with a client to choose locally grown, harvested, milled and dried wood to connect our inside lives with the outside world around us. Working with a team of foresters, small scale loggers and arborists, highly skilled sawyers and local small busi­nesses, I am able to source beau­ti­ful pieces of many differ­ent species; red alder, big leaf maple, black locust, white oak and the firs, cedars, spruces and hemlocks that domi­nate our landscape.