This tea table is crafted from a redwood burl recovered from a tree felled by wildfire in Northern California over a decade ago. The character of this material is inseparable from what it survived: the fire did not destroy the wood so much as finish it — burning the outer edge in the tradition of sho sugi ban, an ancient Japanese technique of charring wood to seal and strengthen it against time. What might have been loss became a record of endurance, written directly into the grain.

This piece and its companion table are sequential slices from the same burl — their figuring continuous, their histories shared. To sit with one is to sit with both.

The base is built in the timber frame tradition — solid, quiet, in service to the wood above.
The brass symbols inlaid across the surface — sun, moon, hand, eye, serpant, — each chosen for their infinite meaning, an invitation to return to a truth we already carry.

Design: Michael Sharf

Fabrication: Michael Sharf, Connor Hayes

Photography: Devin Wilson

Serpent and eye symbols were drawn by James Coffman