Current Residents

Alexsandra Pontonio is an award-winning Naarm/Melbourne-based furniture maker and designer. She creates bespoke pieces that are contemporary in design with a sensitivity to traditional woodcraft. Working predominately with wood, her practice is underpinned by a deep respect for material; she seeks to work with timbers’ intrinsic material tactility.

Pontonio graduated with an Associate Degree in Design (Furniture) from RMIT University in 2015 after which she was the recipient of the Future Leader’s prize in Craft Victoria’s 2016 Fresh! exhibition, the VIVID Design Award, and the Tait Award for Design Innovation at Fringe Furniture. Other exhibitions include David Clark’s ‘At Home -Modern Australian Design’, Government House, Sydney, and the Salone Satellite, Milan.

Isabel is a designer maker producing works in timber and fibre. In her own practice, driven by experimentation, she is interested in intersecting these two mediums in new and stimulating ways resulting in 3D objects that may or may not have a practical function.

At the School of Woodcraft, Isabel not only wants to help her students to design and make a piece of furniture from start to finish but also to grasp the idiosyncrasies of working with timber. And through this process and experience of making, instill the value and worth of the hand-made object.

Brandon Harrison is a furniture designer-maker from Meanjin/Brisbane. He studied fine furniture design at Sturt School for Wood and has worked in set design. Drawing inspiration from the modernists of the early 20th century, Japanese simplicity and Scandinavian functionality, Brandon creates sculptural pieces which focus on fine joinery and material exploration, with a visually striking minimalism.

Jess Humpston is a Naarm/Melbourne-based maker and designer and a recent graduate of the Sturt School for Wood. A background in both fashion and interior design has given Jess a finely tuned understanding of the space a piece of furniture inhabits and a sensitivity to the intimate physical interaction between user and object. Jess’s work is minimal, yet detail focussed and her practice is dedicated to material exploration within highly rational and brief-driven parameters.

Insta – @jesshumpston

Daniel Love is a furniture designer, maker, and restorer, currently running a restoration practice as he develops a range of signature pieces.  Having taken a journeyman’s approach to his tuition in furniture and cabinetmaking, Daniel has worked with several master craftsmen, and engaged in various specialty intensive courses to develop his skills. With over 10 years’ experience restoring iconic Scandinavian mid-century design for Australia’s leading furniture dealers, Daniel has a deep understanding of materials, proven construction methods and aesthetic principles that he utilises in the production of his own work.