Jennifer Seastone Was a New York Actor. A Pandemic Furlough Led Her to Furniture Making

Jennifer Seastone is a furniture maker in London who makes handmade bespoke wood furniture – chairs, tables, stools and bookshelves – in a shared studio in Walthamstow. She was an experimental-theater actor and bartender in New York; when the pandemic furloughed her from her bartending job, she started carving wood, and later trained for nine months at Waters & Acland in the Lake District.

Jennifer starts by doodling ideas on paper, often moves to SketchUp, and, when she can’t get the curves right, to 1:1 scale drawings. She makes custom jigs, then goes “wild with spokeshaves and rasps, and lots and lots of sanding” so the pieces flow organically. The basic forms can be repeated, but the end shaping is done by hand, so no two pieces are the same. Her Sylva chair and her Claudia bookshelf took about four months each.

Jennifer takes commissions. She loves working with clients who have seen her style and trust her to make them something special: she builds in whatever input they think is important, and also likes to surprise them. People usually reach out through the contact form on her website or through Instagram, and the make time depends on how large and complicated the piece is. She has shipped to the US, and she’d love to work with interior designers and architects.

Jennifer finds customers mostly through Instagram, which she thinks has brought the most enquiries. Her website and her page on her shared studio’s website have also brought messages, and when her stool Dora appeared in World of Interiors, it led to one commission so far. Her earliest clients were friends of friends; since September 2024, when she set up on her own, her client base has grown at a steady but slow incline.

When the pandemic struck, Jennifer was furloughed from her bartending job in New York. She had some found walnut planks. She cut a small bit off and started to look at it and wonder what shapes she could find in it. With some very small gouges meant for wood block printing, she started working the wood, then bought a few more gouges and some sandpaper. “I was pretty excited that I could make something beautiful and interesting to look at and soft.” Her brother-in-law gave her a joist from an old house in Philadelphia, and she carved that too. “I was really excited that the pieces were made from wood that had so many different lives, and carried so much soul with it.”

Before that, Jennifer supported herself acting – and bartending – in New York, where she was born and raised. She did a lot of downtown, experimental theater and a lot of new play development, and had gone back to school for visual art, trying to point her career that way while bartending and being in plays. The carving made her want to learn to make furniture and to use shop tools more efficiently. She took classes at a makerspace in Brooklyn, then got a job making crates for art shipping and stayed for a couple of years, still acting and still making sculptures.

A teacher at the makerspace mentioned a school in the Lake District of the UK, and Jennifer started following it on Instagram and dreaming. She never imagined she would actually take the leap – but her husband, her boyfriend at the time, said, “Let’s go!” She moved to the UK in September 2023. The course at Waters & Acland was nine months; she was only scheduled to attend two of the three terms, but was so taken with it that she found a way to stay for all of it. The couple had planned to move back to the States afterwards, but after she won an award at New Furniture Makers, a competition for makers just finishing a program, they decided to give London a go. “I’m a little older than a lot of people starting out, but I feel like I have a good perspective after a whole life before this.”

She still goes back to New York occasionally for an acting job.

“I love doing something I know I’m good at; but I love coming back to do something that has so much to offer, and lifetimes of skill to be had.”

“I doodle at first. I’m not a great drawer (I’ve tried so hard to learn but I remain mediocre), but I can put my ideas on a page and start to see my thoughts on a page.” Jennifer often uses SketchUp next, which can be a challenge: she works with a lot of curves, and CAD doesn’t love curves. Mostly she can get accuracy this way; occasionally she can’t get the curves right and moves to 1:1 scale drawings. She often makes custom jigs for two sides of a leg, stile or rail – “with the hopes that maybe I’ll use them again for another piece, although that rarely happens” – and then goes wild with spokeshaves and rasps, and lots and lots of sanding, to make the pieces flow organically.

She can make the basic forms of a piece repeatable, but she thinks it’s important that the end shaping be done by hand, so the pieces are never completely the same. “Each piece has its own heart that I find through the grain and asking the work what it needs. I do a lot of staring at it and penciling at.” She also loves the idea of precision, in the joinery and in the flow: part of it is technique, and the other part is subjective. “I know it is finished being shaped when I see it.” The initial sketches and plans don’t have life in them; the work really comes to life when she sands and finishes it.

Her finishes are part of the character. Her Sylva chair is British ash, her Claudia bookshelf American cherry, and her stools are cherry. The black legs of her Claudia de Trop console table are charred British ash finished with Danish oil, and the gold on her incense holder and on one of her stools is 23k French gold leaf. Her Sylva chair and her Claudia bookshelf took about four months each. “I think/hope I’m getting a little faster, but I do like the idea that things take the time they take.” There’s another theory – that time takes the time you give it – and she is experimenting with that too.

It’s important to her that the work is touchable: she wants the pieces to be interacted with, and wants people to feel attracted to them and want to be with them. “I think that my life in the theater has made me embrace the animism of the pieces.” She doesn’t aim for humor in the designs – she thinks about shape, negative space, balance and form – but she often looks at the finished pieces and wants to smile. Fred, a low stool, looks like he’s dancing; her bar stools look like giraffes. “I don’t invent their personalities, but they all seem to have one. Somehow they become themselves in the process.”

Jennifer took these photos herself, except for the bookshelf photos. Photos of the Claudia bookshelf: Cloe Rosser.

Jennifer’s clients so far have been friends of friends, and then a few people who found her randomly. Her work lives mostly in the UK, and she has shipped to the US: one piece is near the Barbican in London, one is headed to Walthamstow shortly, one is in New York and one in New Jersey. She’d love to work with interior designers and architects, and sees that as something that will develop in the future.

Jennifer finished her course in the middle of 2024 and has been on her own since September 2024. “It was pretty slow.” She had only three commissions in 2024 and also sold a number of pieces she had made on her own. Her earliest clients came from personal contacts.

There were a couple of breaks, too: she went back to New York twice to work on a theater show that came to her out of the blue. “It was pretty wild to step back into that world for a minute, and then come back to this one. I am happy to say that both were fun and that I’m really glad to be back making again now.”

Instagram seems to be a place where Jennifer can be discovered, and of all her channels it has probably brought the most enquiries. But she tries to have a presence in other places too. She has a website, which has brought messages, and Blackhorse, the shared studio in Walthamstow where she works, has a page for her on its website. She is listed in the Crafts Council directory.

Instagram has brought shows, too. In December 2025, a curator, Brigitta Spinocchia Freund, found Jennifer there out of the blue and included her in a show at Harvey Nichols.

Press helped as well: her stool Dora appeared in World of Interiors, and it has brought one commission so far. “I’ve tried to put myself out there as much as I can, although I do find that I have to limit some of that work as it feels like it could take over and I much prefer to be making.”

“I’m still working out how to compensate myself adequately because my work is pretty labor heavy.” Jennifer continues to learn more about this as her practice grows. “I can’t say I quite understand that yet. And in honesty, I haven’t felt satisfied with this process yet.”

She hasn’t seriously thought about quitting, but she has doubts all the time about whether she knows enough to complete a project. “I suppose this is called ‘imposter syndrome’ – and I do know that most makers have felt this way at some point.” The doubts are now part of her process. She is always nervous at the beginning. She starts to enjoy herself for a while, and then, when a piece is almost assembled, she doubts again. In the sanding and finishing stages, which are a bit laborious, she is so happy to see the work take life. “This is a pretty consistent cycle. I can (mostly) observe this now and laugh at it, but sometimes the worry wins.”

What keeps her going is the shapes she sees in wood, and the knowledge that each time she makes something, she learns something more. “It feels incredible to envision something and poof – there it is – in the real world. It always feels like magic to touch something that was once an idea.”

“I’m not sure things have clicked and stayed that way.” Recognition has come in steps. At New Furniture Makers, Jennifer won third place for the bespoke award in 2024 and second place in the empty chair competition in 2025, and people have asked to show her pieces. “It always feels incredible to have the pieces noticed, with awards, or requests to have them shown. But I think that time is what makes things click. A continuum of seeing that things are working out.”

Her theater community and her family at home have supported her the whole way. “That helps so much, to feel supported, even when they’re far away. And know that other people believe in me.”

Jennifer is working on a commission right now. This fall she had a group show, and in September an open studio; she’s sure there’ll be something coming up, but doesn’t know what it is yet. She’d love to work with interior designers and architects, and sees that as something that will develop. She is also starting to focus her work on more local woods – “which I’m so excited about.”

“I love my pieces. I love the time it takes to make them. I love the wood that they’re made from. I love that they go to homes that are loved. The wood carries stories and life and knowledge. I respect that, and I believe that the spirits in them are felt by those that house them. At least I hope. They are objects that have use, but they are art and they are made from nature.”

Have a question for Jennifer about her work or a commission, or a few words about her story and work? Leave them in the comments at the end of this story.

Who: Jennifer Seastone
What: Handmade bespoke wood furniture
Where: Walthamstow, London, UK
Started: September 2024
Audience: 2.4k followers
Customers: Friends of friends and people who found her work; pieces in London, New York and New Jersey
Price range: Large pieces from £700; smaller housewares by enquiry
Custom orders: Yes
Ships: Mostly within the UK; has shipped to the US
Works with designers: Open to it
Channels: Social Media, Word of Mouth & Offline