The brewery was two years old and about to take off when I arrived. Early on, the marketing director asked the whole company whether anyone could upholster. I’d done a little, so I volunteered for two wingback chairs. That led to another project, then another, and before long, designing and building was the full-time job: one of two makers on staff, each running a separate shop.
Most of what I built had to live in a working taproom, where a crowded Friday means it gets spilled on, dragged across the floor, leaned on, and stood on. So the design time goes into the people who come after me: the ones who hang it, strike it, clean it, and fix it when I’m not there. Nine screens that each come off their mount without touching the other eight. Banner racks one employee can handle alone from a scissor lift. A rentable lounge of thirty-odd pieces — floor anchors, wall sections, counters, planter boxes, sectional banquettes — bolted to the concrete to take a crowd, and off the floor again in under an hour. Drawing is where most of that gets solved. Rhino has been an everyday tool for years, and working out how a thing goes together before anything gets cut is still one of my favorite parts of the job.
None of it happened alone, either. The work ran through marketing and events on one side, and in the shop through a second maker and the welder who took on the steel I designed and jigged.
Fifteen years in professional kitchens came before all of it, ending as head chef at Café Ciré in Copenhagen. That’s where the habits came from: everything prepped before service starts, a crew working shoulder to shoulder, and the plate still looks perfect at eleven on a Saturday night.
I have a saying: make is make. A seasonal menu, a wearable beer can, a 12-foot windmill: each starts with the same things. Imagination, curiosity about what’s possible, and close attention to how people will actually use what you make. What I want next is a shop that runs on the same things, and problems I haven’t solved yet.