Our Vancouver Workshop
Made right, here in Vancouver.
For over 30 years we have offered all of our hardwood furniture, mainly tables, chairs, bed frames, cabinets, mirrors, and bookcases, from our own Vancouver workshop. And we are fortunate to have a small core of passionate furniture makers, including a finisher who takes the raw wood pieces to a durable, wonderfully-tactile finish.
There is a huge benefit to our customers from this approach. For one thing, we are not restricted to a limited number of designs and sizes, as are our competitors. As well, over the years, our customers often have maintenance needs on their pieces, whether it is restoration after accidental damage, or simply refreshing a finish after young children have reached the age of relative reason! This is why we say we build “furniture for keeps”.
What is Bench-Made Furniture?
We often refer to our Verus hardwood furniture as bench-made. This means that we don't follow the common approach to furniture making taken by large manufacturers. From mass-market factories in Asia to the most respected of high quality European manufacturers, the usual manufacturing model necessitates making a fixed number of design/size options on a “cutting cycle" of around 10-12 weeks. If you need a table size in between their offerings, a sideboard an inch or two shorter to fit a tight space, or you would like to colour coordinate to a family heirloom, there is no option. To us, this is like a shoe store offering perhaps five sizes in two widths! We believe that for a “non-consumable” like hardwood furniture built to last over a lifetime, it is not optimal to compromise your personal needs or preferences.
A Note on Materials
Until about 15 years ago, we relied mainly on large hardwood lumber stockists to supply our needs for our workshop. Then one day, at a woodworking machinery trade show in the USA, we had the good fortune to meet a member of a family that, for generations, has operated a unique hardwood lumber mill in the North East. We knew that this is the source of the finest North American, sustainably-harvested hardwoods, but we were in for a big surprise!
We were amazed to see a display of flawless, extremely wide boards of Cherry, Walnut, Maple and White Oak. But they were presented in “boule form”, meaning a log was sawn, kiln-dried, and then with the individual boards or “flitches” re-assembled in the order they were sawn. This is very different from the way most hardwood lumber is sawn. It is typically cut from much smaller logs, and then all mixed up, only graded for lack of defect and minimum width, much narrower than the super wide flitches we were seeing at the display.
We immediately recognized the value here. Now we could build furniture with wider material, matched for grain and colour as it came off one log! If you see one of our tables or cabinets, you will clearly see the quiet beauty of matched hardwood timber, obviating the need for coloured stains to achieve uniformity of colour or hide mis-matched grain patterns.
When we say that material quality is one of the trinity of values we hold close, namely design, material and craftsmanship, this is what we mean.
Meet The Makers
Ian Johnstone
Born and raised in Vancouver, Ian had the good fortune to hear his calling when he was 18 years old, and has been making furniture ever since. In his own words “I have been sawing logs all day and in my dreams at night.” Ian walked into our little shop 33 years ago, just to see what our business was all about. We happened to need a source for an order for lathe-turned table legs and Ian said, “Of course, I can make those”. And he did that, perfectly, and that started a collaboration that has grown stronger over the decades. The mandate Ian takes and teaches is to build our Verus range to the highest level of craftsmanship, without any compromise in materials chosen or time required to build to an heirloom standard.
Mel Karic
Mel was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and trained as a furniture maker in Sarajevo. In 2001, after surviving the Bosnian war, he moved to Canada with his family. Mel was introduced to us in 2011 by a fellow countryman, who also came to Canada around the same time. It was truly our good fortune to have Mel bring his years of joinery skills to our little shop. Although Mel takes on a myriad of bespoke furniture projects in the shop, each one unique and the antithesis of a production line approach, he is a master chair-maker. If you have the good fortune to own a set of chairs made by Mel, you will see the skill in every mortise, tenon joint, and perfectly-matched hardwood leg and stretcher.
Sakib Velagic
Sakib was born and raised in Bosnia and Herzegovina but was forced to leave during the war in 1992. He moved to Canada with his family in 2000 where he started as a trainee in the finishing department at Form & Function. We were immediately impressed by his remarkable commitment to learning the craft, and we were equally struck by his strong work ethic. Today, Sakib is a critical member of our manufacturing team, ensuring every Verus piece of hardwood furniture that leaves the shop is not merely beautifully finished, but that it also feels beautiful to the human hand. And come Summer, Sakib applies his skills to our Teak garden furniture range, whenever a customer chooses the golden tone of finished Teak over the classic silver-grey appearance. Sakib is, in a word, irreplaceable.