Since 2017
Our Story
"The tree spent eighty years learning how to stand. We can spend six months learning how to sit."
Form + Timber began with a windstorm. In January 2017, a giant Oregon white oak came down on the property of Jonas Lindqvist — a furniture maker who had spent a decade doing factory work and dreaming of joinery. Rather than let the tree become firewood, he rented a bandsaw mill, milled it on-site, and stacked it in a friend's barn to air-dry.
Two years later the stack was ready, and Jonas had two partners: Ada Okafor, a joiner from a shipwright family, and Marcus Bell, who left a career restoring antique furniture because, in his words, "I kept fixing other people's shortcuts."
The first Heritage Sideboard was built from that storm-felled oak and sold before it was finished. The second and third took longer, because we had already made our best sales pitch — the wood was local, the story was real, and the grain showed every year of the tree's standing life.
Today the workshop on SE Ankeny holds three benches, a dry stack of walnut and ash, and a policy that hasn't changed since 2017: one woodworker per piece, signed inside the back panel. We build furniture the way we do because we intend to be repair shops for our own work in thirty years — and we would like the repair to be a pleasure.
The Benches
Three names on every signature line
Jonas Lindqvist
Founder · Design & Milling
Mills every board himself and still uses the bandsaw from 2017. Keeps a notebook of each tree: species, felling date, the storm that brought it down. His drawer of paper patterns now outweighs his tool chest.
Ada Okafor
Partner · Joinery & Chairs
Fourth-generation shipwright. The only one who will attempt the steam-bent Kanso arms, and the author of the candle-on-the-runner trick in our care guide. Signs her chairs inside the seat rail.
Marcus Bell
Partner · Restoration & Finishing
Spent twelve years restoring antiques before joining, which is why every finish here is repairable — he has sanded too many lacquered mistakes to make one. Runs the repair desk and the first-Friday tours.
3
Woodworkers, all of them
214
Pieces in the world
2 yrs
Minimum timber air-dry
Visit the workshop.
We give tours on first Fridays — sawdust, dry stacks, and honest answers about lead times.
Plan a Visit