J. Allan Creative

Furniture

Cabinets

Artistic

Tree Forms

Tables

Custom

Seating

Introduction

For over thirty years, I’ve been transforming the natural beauty and resiliency of wood into artistic furniture.

My design interests range from traditional styles influenced by my Mennonite heritage to free-flowing organic lines inspired by my childhood on our ancestral farm in Waterloo County in southern Ontario, Canada.

My portfolio showcases not only this range of design styles but also the quality of my workmanship.

All items can be made to order as one-of-a-kind accent pieces, or as the design theme for an entire set of furniture.

Use the contact page to place an order or request a free, thirty-minute consultation.

Sandcastle Story

It started with a simple shelf.

At that stage in my development as a craftsman and creator of custom wood furniture, I was certainly confident enough to build a shelf.

Yet I knew that my client, an elderly woman who was also an artist, had a very keen eye and deep appreciation for quality craftsmanship. I knew that she would push me to excellence.

I remember my first visit to the Sand Castle, the home that she shared with her husband. I had ventured out into the countryside and drove down their long driveway. Immediately, I could see that it was a unique house that revealed the owners’ penchant for inviting nature indoors. The front door was a masterpiece of woodwork and stained glass that not only welcomed me but also told me something of their story.

It was nervous excitement that I felt that first time. I was both inspired and intimidated by my new client’s daring creativity and careful attention to detail.

However, as I worked for her, we learned to appreciate one another. I not only accomplished the simple shelf for her, but I was deemed capable to take on another original project. Then another, and another.

Over the next ten years, she was my patron. I not only crafted works of wooden art for her, but I interpreted her vision for décor. I built several more shelves, each one more intricate than the one before. I worked with birch, maple and cherry, and with the live edges of roots, trunks and branches. In our designs, she and I worked closely together and we followed the flowing lines of the wood itself. I built wall units made with sliced trunks. I created a fainting couch below a mirror of movement, and then a climbing corner shelf that resembled a tree with branches of books. I crafted a curio tree from cherry, and then a substantial desk with Serpentine top and drawers.

That desk was the crowning glory of my work for my friend and patron at the Sand Castle. The desk was a far cry from the simple shelf that I had made ten years earlier. It was a project that required at least five hundred hours of my attention and labour.

In the end, we were both satisfied, not just with the work but with what we had accomplished together. I had grown as a craftsman, and she had grown as a patron. In this unique partnership, we both grew as people.

See the album on FaceBook