I’m a longtime admirer of the Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary design studio Workstead. Founded in 2009 by Stefanie Brechbuehler and Robert Highsmith, the firm’s projects range from architecture and interiors to lighting and home products—all of them featuring striking aesthetics, refined craftsmanship, and a skillful blend of traditional and contemporary influences. Most of all, I love the fresh and innovative ways Workstead uses Real American Hardwood® in residential spaces. Whether it’s an old favorite like oak or a less familiar one like cypress, their custom millwork always delights and inspires. Here are three examples of their work.
Asked to add personality to a bland Brooklyn town house, Workstead installed finely crafted woodwork, including some of the most characterful kitchen cabinets imaginable. Instead of hardware handles, the doors and drawers feature finger grips in the form of ½-inch-deep wedges carved into the solid wood. This transforms the surface of the cabinetry into a bas-relief sculpture across which the light plays, creating dynamic visual effects throughout the day. For the wood, the designers chose beech with a hardwax-oil finish because its light color and subtle grain complement rather than compete with the distinctive design—as do the Pietra Cardosa countertops and backsplash.
Workstead enlivened the bland kitchen in a Brooklyn, New York town house with custom beech cabinetry. Photography by Matthew Williams.
Hired to design the interiors of a two-story converted carriage house from the 1800s on Charleston, South Carolina’s historic Bee’s Row, Workstead made a number of additions and alterations that sensitively fuse past and present. Among the most notable of these is the extensive use of cypress, a hardwood celebrated for its golden color, smooth texture, and straight grain. In one of the bedrooms, beautifully milled and finished cypress planks line the walls, creating a warm and welcoming cocoon of a space that introduces a clean, modern sensibility to the neighborhood’s traditional Southern architecture.
In Charleston, South Carolina, Workstead used cypress planks to line the bedroom walls of a converted carriage house from the 1800s. Photography by Jeff Holt
To accommodate living spaces, bedrooms, and a kitchen, Workstead added a new two-story pavilion to a 19th-century mansion they were restoring in New York’s Hudson Valley. The light and airy interiors of the modern structure imaginatively reinterpret the region’s traditional Shaker and Dutch vernacular architecture on a larger scale. The kitchen features custom cherry cabinetry that pairs elegant simplicity with rich wood tones. Topped with black granite, the cabinets and central island feel unmistakably contemporary yet would not look out of place in the Victorian house next door.
Custom cherry kitchen cabinetry outfits a new Workstead-designed pavilion next to a 19th-century Hudson Valley house the firm also renovated. Photography by Matthew Williams
Real American Hardwood is a registered trademark of the Real American Hardwood Coalition.