Artisan — Dan Wallace
I’m a skilled woodworker, an artist whose medium is wood. I make artisan-quality custom cabinetry and furniture in a shop on my New Hampshire farm. The signature of my woodworking is exquisite functionality.
My style of woodworking is a hybrid of techniques. As much as I might like to be that storybook woodworker with piles of shavings at my feet made by a hand plane powered only by muscle, the New Hampshire in me won’t allow it, and the market can’t support it.\
While power tools figure in my work, not one is operated by computer, as in mass-market production. I’m the one who sends a piece of wood through the saw, bevels an edge with a router, smooths the face frame of a cabinet. I am designer and assembler, the one who applies the final coat of finish to a piece. And all these parts of a project begin unfolding in my head the moment a design concept takes life there, the way a creation is going to look when I finish working wood.
I am influenced by the clean, unadorned simplicity, the functionality and craftsmanship of the Shaker style. While I stray a good deal from the “Shaker look,” the premise is in every one of my designs.
WOODWORKING PHILOSOPHY
My philosophy of woodworking owes a great deal to the example of George Nakashima, a great master woodworker and father of the American craft movement, who strived for perfection in every part of the construction process. His work has shaped me as an artisan with a keen understanding of wood and its nuances, the “many skills for the thousand judgments one must make to shape a good wood object,” as a man drawn since a young age by the woodworking trade’s call for “dedication, concentration, and love to build as perfect an object as possible.”
The part of my work that’s not Nakashima is all me. Woodworking is more than a livelihood for me; it’s how I express myself. Beyond Nakashima, my professional journey bears the mark of apprenticeships served along the way, first with my father — an enormously talented, self-taught finish carpenter with exacting attention to detail, who shaped wood primarily for the fun of it, and necessity. Later, I worked under a prominent local woodworker and builder.
JOURNEY TO BECOMING A WOODWORKER
I’m a coastal New Hampshire man, born and raised. I attended Portsmouth public schools, after which I set out to make my way in the building trades — in the seacoast area at the start, in Florida for a spell, then Memphis. After coming home, a decade ago, I gravitated to the art of making fine furniture, a craft that plays to all my strengths.
This venture was born out of all this experience, a journey spent answering my trade’s call “to build as perfect an object as possible.” Sea Smoke Design reflects my origins not far from the Piscataqua River, where I often fell asleep as a kid to the sounds of harbor bells pealing not far off in the night. Growing up in these parts exposed me to a natural phenomenon called “sea smoke” that always intrigued me. It occurs when very cold air blows over warm water, forming what’s called “steam,” but really fog. In time, I came to see the woodworking process as much like sea smoke flowing over a river — shape and size shifting, ever-changing.
This place called Sea Smoke Design is where I bring creations to life that make home and office spaces more livable and functional — with pieces that not only fit and express a client’s unique lifestyle but adorn it as well. I offer what production shops can’t, which is exquisitely crafted, custom-made furniture that fits the style of a home and answers the bespoke needs of its occupants.
In this way, my pieces are like what Whitman said of himself: they “contain multitudes.” I want them to be used, scratched, and dented by everyday family life. Those marks create and hold memories, deepening the story behind each piece. I like to think of them (the stories too), getting passed down through a family.