Furniture and Decor Shaped by Hand in Southwest Florida

As AI speeds production and smooths edges across industries, these Southwest Florida makers are moving in the opposite direction. In Naples, Chad Jensen hand-numbers walnut benches limited to 100 pieces. PJ White applies thousands of dots individually with an acrylic dropper over 100 hours. Fort Myers’ Christine Cutting calculates shrinkage on hand-built ceramic sconces through trial and error.

The furniture, lighting and home decor emerging from Naples and Fort Myers studios prove that the most compelling designs still come from human touch, experimentation and time.

Nang Console Table by Cocoon 

In Cocoon’s nature-driven furnishings, Southeast Asian hardwoods undergo a months-long cycle of bleaching, heating and drying to achieve the studio’s luminous, unpainted white. This console takes its cue from the river-smoothed pebbles that founder Mitchell Siegel studied in Japanese gardens. Carved from a single acacia trunk and refined through hours of sanding, the table’s low, sculptural profile projects strength and serenity in equal measure. cocoongallery.com

Museum Bench by Chad Jensen, Method & Concept 

Chad Jensen has long been a shaping force in Southwest Florida’s contemporary art and design scene. He recently relocated Method & Concept gallery to the Thomas Riley Artisans’ Guild campus in North Naples, giving him the space to return to his roots as a maker. For the Museum Bench, Jensen set himself a 24-hour design challenge and let the materials dictate the form. Working with American black walnut, he began with the seat, designing around 12-inch boards—the widest stock he can reliably source for reproductions. A ceruse finish accentuates the grain, while a ceramic wax gives the surface warmth. The hand-stitched English bridle-leather sling provides functional space for catalogs and sketchbooks. Only 100 benches will be made, each one hand-numbered and marked with an insignia. “The beauty of wood [is] no two pieces are ever going to be identical,” Jensen says. “That’s the part of working with nature that I love.” methodandconcept.com

Hand-Sculpted Luminaires by C3 Studios, Christine Cutting

After years in social work and raising four children, Fort Myers–raised ceramicist Christine Cutting returned to art through pottery. From her garage-turned-home studio, she crafts functional pieces, including bespoke dinnerware for local chefs, and more recently, sconces. The Hand-Sculpted Luminaires series traces back to a set of nautical plates she created for Harold’s Restaurant. Unlike her wheel-thrown vessels, each sconce is hand-built, allowing her to mold the clay’s soft, tide-like ruffles. To keep the focus on form rather than the clay’s texture, she chose a smooth white stoneware and paired it with unfinished brass and black hardware. A puzzle of shrinkage calculations, wiring logistics and trial-and-error fittings, her first foray into lighting pushed her to swap instinct for precision, measuring every curve to ensure clay and hardware met cleanly after firing. “Every time I look at something, whether it’s a bowl or a vase or whatever, I turn it around in my head,” she says. “[I ask myself] ‘What else could this be?’” c3studioart.com

The Essence Mirror by Zoa Concept

After moving from Poland to Naples in 2023, Joanna Janusz began experimenting with hempcrete, a sustainable, fast-growing material she prefers for its sculptural potential and low environmental impact. She and her daughter, Aleksandra, founded Zoa Concept, evolving from concrete candles into biomorphic furnishings and hand-formed home decor. Working from her home studio, Joanna shapes The Essence mirror by mixing the hempcrete directly on the table and molding the base in one intuitive session. She refines the surface with a thin, hand-troweled layer of lime plaster. The circular glass inset came later; once she carved the wall decor’s void, she realized the form needed a reflective surface to complete its composition. Joanna sees the mirror as a reflection of human fragility—solid in structure, yet gentle in contour: “We can be fragile like glass.” zoaconcept.com

Stainless-Steel Rectangular Coffee Table by Cori Craciun, Sticks & Stones 

When designing her first table in 2017, Cori Craciun of Naples’ Sticks & Stones furniture, searched for a fabricator to help her with the metal legs. Working with Abdul Imdaq Edhin, she thought: ‘What if we built an entire table from metal but gave it the character of wood?’ “He looked at me like, ‘You[‘re] crazy!’” she says. Giving a flat, rigid surface the warmth and movement of lumber meant building the ‘grain’ into the metal, spending a week wet-sanding, working through successive grits from 320 to 3,000, followed by wool pads and fine polishing compounds. They started with a monolithic coffee table, where sunburst-like channels catch light, giving the blocky form a sense of organic fluidity. “[The lines] soften it,” she says. “It’s still natural, even though it’s metal.” Although Craciun centered her brand on wood furnishings, she still makes metal coffee and end tables, featuring live-edge curves and hammered dimples, recalling burl nodules and chisel marks. sticksandstonescollection.com 

Foreign Matter Collection // White Series — Formation No. 1 by PJ White 

PJ White was renovating homes in Naples when he created his first art piece during a lull in the permitting cycle. The piece sold for nearly $30,000 at Judith Liegeois’s gallery, propelling his studio practice. “I like to use my hands,” he says. “When something pops into my head, I just create it.” His work carries the imprint of construction materials and hands-on problem-solving, from resin-coated canvases to sculptural forms like this stool from his Foreign Matter series. White started with reclaimed wood, layering foam and epoxy clay to achieve the organic, cratered surface, then hardening the piece through about 10 coats of epoxy—each brushed and rubbed in by hand. He estimates it took roughly 100 hours to complete, including applying thousands of dots individually with an acrylic dropper. The result mirrors the glossy, hyper-modern sensibility of Miami’s pop art scene, a style White hopes to expand in Naples. He imagines the piece as an end table or perch—a textural accent that reads equal parts playful and architectural.