While others chase ancient grain, we plant time like a crop. Our basswood grows for precisely eight years—not a season less, not a year more. The forest manager calls it “calendar wood.” Its rings run even, its temper steady. This is not the romance of wilderness, but the discipline of a material that knows its purpose.
The Quiet Workshop
You hear the difference before you see it. No roar of production lines here—just the whisper of hand planes on wood, the soft scratch of sandpaper finding its rhythm. Master Wu can feel a louver’s curve down to half a millimeter with his fingers. “Machines measure,” he says, “but hands remember.”
We don’t build shutters. We follow the wood where it wants to go.
The Forty Hues
Most workshops offer white, cream, maybe six stains. We keep forty tones in the tinting room—not because it sells, but because wood deserves nuance. When basswood accepts color, it does so evenly, deeply, like paper drinking ink. This predictability is what lets us promise what others can’t: that the stain you choose at sunrise will hold its character through decades of sunsets.
Hidden Joints, Visible Truth
Every screw we bury, every hinge we conceal, is a choice to let wood speak louder than hardware. We’ve seen too many beautiful designs ruined by a single rusted bracket. So we design backwards: first, how it should feel to the hand; last, how it’s fastened to the wall. The strongest joints are the ones you never see.
The Client Who Understood
She asked for “the warmth of old windows from a childhood home.” We sent her a raw basswood block. “Live with this for seven nights,” we said. On the seventh day, she wrote: “Now I understand. I don’t want wood that looks old—I want wood that knows how to grow old.”
Her shutters arrived with edges softened like sea-glass, each louver tuned to catch the afternoon light slanting through her magnolia tree.