Kauri Craft and Furniture is a workshop on Hinau Road in Muriwai Valley, Rodney, making solid tables, seats, carvings and sculptures from ancient swamp kauri. The wood is kauri that has lain buried for around 40,000 years, and the pieces are cut from its trunks and root stumps. No table, seat or carving is the same, and the root wood has the most striking grain and colour.
The work is done by Jaap Tediek, a woodworker all his life who began as a boatbuilder and cabinetmaker before he came to New Zealand and found swamp kauri. He mostly uses milled slabs, but he is one of the few makers who crafts root stumps in their natural form, which are hard to work with. The natural gum and bark are kept intact, and the studio has its own method of sealing and stabilising the wood, so the pieces stay crack-free, even on central or floor heating. Customers from around the world have bought from the studio, and kauri tables have been shipped to tropical countries. To ask about designs, you call the studio. Our pick in Muriwai Valley for one-off swamp kauri furniture.