Crown of Thorns

Crown of Thorns is a traditional folk wooden joinery technique practiced during the 1800s and early 1900s, until it eventually faded and became a lost art.

Through lessons with one of the last living practitioners, a Colorado craftsperson named Bob Olsen (known as Tramparttraditions on Etsy), I learned the technique. After studying it in its traditional form, I began adapting it with the goal of advancing the generations-long design story of this fastener-free, glue-free, modular construction method.

The result of my first experiments are the first Crown of Thorns constructions in history to be structural in nature, and support the weight of a human body. The Crown of Thorns Stool and Coffee Table are a small addition to a design conversation that has spanned generations, and a proof of concept for what can emerge when designers look to time-tested folk practices to animate new possibilities of form and function.