It started in a borrowed garage in Southeast Portland. In 2015, founders Elena Marchetti and Thomas Chen left their corporate design jobs with a shared conviction: furniture should be built to last generations, not landfill seasons.
They spent their first year sourcing suppliers who shared their values, finding mills that practiced responsible forestry and tanneries that treated workers fairly. Every plank of white oak, every hide of vegetable-tanned leather had to meet standards most manufacturers would call impractical.
The impractical approach worked. Word spread through Portland's design community, then beyond. A dining table built for a local restaurant caught the eye of a visiting editor. An architect in Seattle ordered a dozen desks for her new office. By 2018, we had outgrown two workshops.
Today, Ember & Oak operates from a 12,000 square foot studio in the Pearl District. Our team of seventeen artisans produces roughly 400 pieces per year, each one built to order, each one carrying our lifetime structural guarantee. We still source from the same mills. We still hand-finish every surface. We still believe that furniture should outlive the people who make it.
