about
y now you’ve probably realized i’m not that michael douglas. i’m just a guy that makes furniture from trash in porto and i just so happen to be a michael douglas — too.
growing up the child of an interior designer, good design was omnipresent. kids are sponges; when you’re young you just kind of take it all in same as the air you breathe. from house to house i was developing an appreciation and understanding for so many things, completely unbeknownst to me. it took me a long time to understand the importance of this, longer to give it a name and even longer to pursue it. i arrived at a point in my life, one that i think a lot of us can relate to; a point where i was without direction or fulfillment. my infatuation with furniture and objects was the secret crush i didn’t dare to act upon, but alas, desperate times call for desperate measures.
i spent the eight years that followed working with furniture from the top down: studying it, selling it, refinishing it, repairing it. it was a deconstruction of sorts. and at the end of it all i wanted to put it back together again; only better. and better is a relative term. yes, better can mean stronger joints or higher quality woods, the focus of most woodworkers, but that’s not what i’m talking about here. i’ve used the chemicals that strip, the ones that protect, the ones that adhere and thin. i know where they come from and what’s in it and what it does. i know about the cutting and the exploitation of both land and people. and i know about the waste. hell, we all do. we see it, everyday of our lives. when i say better, this is what i wanted to do better.
i don’t come from a long line of woodworkers. i have no formal education in furniture, design or art, for that matter. i’m pretty much self taught. i make a lot of mistakes. i doubt myself. i go from the highest of highs to lowest of lows in the same day. but i believe in the work that i do. because it’s good medicine for me and it’s challenging and it’s beautiful and because at the end of the day i care about the impact of the products i use and keeping good materials from becoming waste.
thanks for reading ❤️