Four Generations of Craft. One Shared Respect for the Work.

Dovetails & Stitches is rooted in four generations of furniture making. What began at the workbench has been passed down, practiced, and refined through decades of hands-on experience.

Today, that experience shapes everything we make, from custom furniture built for a particular home to smaller pieces designed in our studio and made one at a time.

  • We do not cut corners.
  • We do not rush the work.
  • We do not build around trends.

Instead, we pay attention.

  • To proportion and function.
  • To the wood and the way it wants to be used.
  • To the details that make a piece work better and age well.
  • To how something will live in a home, not just how it looks on the day it leaves our studio.

For custom furniture, that means listening carefully to the people who will use it and the space it needs to serve. For our home goods, it means refining our own designs until they feel useful, balanced, and worth making again.

When something is made with that level of attention, it becomes more than an object.

It becomes something you live with.
Something that lasts.
Something that belongs.

Meet the Makers behind the work and learn more about the family, background, and experience that shape what we make.

What We Do (and Why It Matters)

We make both custom furniture and a growing collection of handmade wood home goods.

Our custom furniture is designed around a particular room, need, or idea. Our home goods are Dovetails & Stitches designs we make one at a time or in small batches.

The scale changes, but the thinking behind the work does not.

We care about proportion, material, construction, and how a piece will actually be used. We work primarily in solid hardwoods and choose materials for their beauty, stability, and ability to age well.

That means:

  • Custom furniture designed around a specific space, function, or idea
  • Furniture and storage built with the same attention to proportion, hardwood, and construction as our larger commissioned work
  • Handmade home goods including knife storage, menorahs, propagation pieces, and other useful objects designed and made in our studio
  • Solid hardwood construction as our starting point, with real wood veneer used selectively when the material or design calls for it
  • Furniture made to order and home goods made one at a time or in small batches, allowing us to focus on quality and consistency rather than volume

We are not trying to make everything.

We are trying to make useful things well, from a dining table that anchors a room to a knife block that sits on the counter every day.

The goal is simple: make pieces that work well, feel good to live with, and are worth keeping.

Inside a custom build: The Ania Desk

“All of the back & forth questions never went to waste. ‘How Sweet It Is’ has now settled into her new cozy space! It’s amazingly perfect in how it matches the bench seating. The delivery guys were great, and they loved the crate. I can’t wait for Bob to get home today to share this special day with me. Thank you again… a million times.”

— Kathleen, a Dovetails and Stitches client

What We Make

Custom Furniture

Dining tables, desks, consoles, media centers, storage pieces, and other furniture designed for a specific space or need

Built primarily from solid hardwood and made to order in our studio

Furniture & Storage

Record and media furniture, shelving, cabinets, and other pieces designed around how they will actually be used

Proportions, materials, and details developed for the piece rather than a standard production line

Kitchen & Dining

Custom kitchen islands, dining tables, and other furniture designed around how the room is used

Hardwood knife blocks, magnetic knife racks, spice racks, and other daily-use pieces

Made from solid hardwoods and built either to order or one at a time in small batches

Home Goods & Decor

Propagation pieces, menorahs, Judaica, and other functional and sculptural objects

Studio designs that bring the same materials and attention to detail we use in our furniture to smaller pieces for the home

 How We Build

Our furniture is made to order, while many of our home goods are made one at a time or in small batches. Structure comes first, followed by surface refinement and finish.

We work primarily in solid hardwoods such as walnut, cherry, white oak, and hard maple. We also use figured woods such as curly walnut, figured cherry, and birdseye maple, selected for their character, stability, and how they age over time.

For selected designs, particularly exceptional burls and figured woods, we may use real wood veneer over a solid hardwood core. Veneer has long been part of fine furniture making and allows us to work with remarkable material that would be difficult or impractical to use in solid form.

Finishes are chosen around the wood and how the piece will actually be used. Depending on the application, we use hand-applied oils, hardwax oils, tung oil, lacquer, and other protective finishes chosen to balance feel, protection, and longevity.

A deeper look at materials, joinery, and process can be found on our Craftsmanship page.

For a clearer look at our custom furniture process, including timelines and tradeoffs, see What to Expect When Commissioning Custom Furniture.

Designed for Long-Term Use

Our work is made for real homes, not display. Pieces are designed with movement, maintenance, and longevity in mind, acknowledging that wood changes, light shifts, and use leaves its mark.

Care guidance is provided with every piece, and we remain available for questions, refinishing, or repair long after delivery. We expect our work to earn its place over decades, not seasons.

 Featured, Quoted & Recognized 

Richard’s woodworking and furniture expertise has been quoted by 
Better Homes & Gardens, Food & Wine, Southern Living, BobVila.com, Men’s Journal, and Livingetc.


Dovetails & Stitches products have also been featured by HGTV, including our East of the Sun solid hardwood menorah.

His contributions have covered furniture design and repair, woodworking tools, wood finishing, furniture care, and the long-term care of wood products.