Our latest custom mosaic coat racks

If you’ve spent any time visiting our studios or talking with us in our booth at a craft show, you’ve probably heard Johannah say our coat racks are her favorite item we make. They bring everything we do together: metal, mosaic, and wood, in a package that is fairly affordable for many folks. While we always have some available for sale in our online shop, we also make many custom coat racks.

Customers often share a photo of the room or nearby items to help us understand the colors and style they’re looking for. That’s the case with these first three mosaics. The beachy mosaic at the top is in an oak frame, while the others are in cherry.

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Notice there’s a lot of blue? That’s frequently the case, with green being the second most common color for custom coat racks.

Next up we have one inspired by the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains, and then a request for a mosaic that’s slightly taller than our usual 3” height. These two mosaics are in mahogany frames. We use reclaimed wood for all our mosaic coat rack frames.

And last we have a mosaic version of the Charlotte, NC skyline. This one is in an oak frame. Cities are surprisingly fun and interesting to create in mosaic! We made a coat rack featuring the skyline of Chicago a few years ago. You can see that one at the bottom of a blog post here.

Coordinating Set of Home Accessories

This client reached out to us about making a set of custom coordinating items for their new home. They’d seen our work in our Etsy shop and on our social media, and it had set their wheels spinning imagining an address plaque, hall bench, and coat rack for the entrance of their house. What a dream it was for us to combine all our skills to create this special grouping!

Here you can see each of the pieces in progress in our studios. The bench and coat rack hooks are forged steel, with the seat and coat rack frame made from cherry wood. The mosaics are made from a variety of glass and ceramic.

Like many of our most successful projects, this couple gave us a few particulars to work with, and left the rest of the design up to us. They told us their colors, shared photos of the entrance to their home, and mentioned some of our work to which they were especially drawn. That balance of specifics and openness allows us as artisans the structure and freedom we need to create new and fresh custom work in our signature style.

Below are photos and details of each of the finished pieces in our studios. Johannah loves to photograph all our work in the metal studio. The west-facing side of the shop space is covered entirely in large, industrial-era windows allowing for the most beautiful filtered natural lighting.

Extra Large Dining Table

Last fall, we created a super-duper extra large custom dining table. This thing is seriously huge, and a great opportunity to show off some substantial forged table legs. We collaborated with our friend David Bohnhoff to create the top.

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Here Kyle and his assistant Kallen (in the first photo) are forging the table legs using the power hammer and a jig with clamps on the table.

Forged steel table bases ready for their tops. The table is designed in two sections that can be arranged side by side or end to end. Check out the rivet detailing in the second photo!

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And here's the mighty 12-seater custom dining table installed. The top is quarter-sawn oak with a gorgeous grain. It's in two sections that match the base. To keep the fit nice and snug when the bases are arranged side by side, Kyle forged a bracket to lay across each end, as well as shorter brackets to use when the tables are end to end. The brackets store in a space under the top of the table. You can see some of David's process photos as he created the top and carved the dados to fit the brackets on his Instagram account. (Click through to see them all!) The feet feature oak bases as well.