Our story
Made by Caleb Rhodes, Bentonville.
My great-grandfather cleared land in Madison County with a crosscut saw. My grandfather farmed it. My father sold it. I bought a small piece back and put a shop on it, which is the kind of thing that sounds poetic until you are moving a 600-pound walnut log by yourself in July.
Hewn Goods makes furniture and kitchen boards from trees that grew within forty miles of the bench. I buy logs from two sawyers I have known for years, sticker the boards in a solar kiln out back, and wait: a year per inch of thickness, no shortcuts. The wood tells you what it wants to be once it is dry.
I cut joinery by hand where you will see it and by machine where you will not, and I am not precious about that. What I am precious about is that nothing here is veneer, nothing is plywood, and every finish can be renewed with a rag and a can of oil for the rest of the piece's life. Most of what I make is meant to be the last one you buy.
