Tides and Timbers – FineWoodworking

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February 25, 2026

On February 25, 2026

Synopsis: Peter Pierobon’s series of Tidal furniture was inspired by his encounters with logs strewn on the beaches along the west side of Vancouver Island. The contact points on these pieces are very small, so structural integrity is crucial.

Several times a year, Peter Pierobon and his wife go camping on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island, a place he describes as “truly wild and absolutely stunning.” Surf-smoothed logs are strewn on the beaches, and when a storm comes through, he says, “it stacks them up—you can have a pile of logs 20 ft. high, all interconnected and interlocked, waiting for the next storm to rearrange them.”

The dramatic sight of those stacks found its way into his sketchbook and, along with other elements of coastal ecology, inspired his series of Tidal furniture.

Although he sometimes incorporates driftwood in his work (and concedes that he is “that guy you see pulling logs out of the surf”), these pieces are made from 12/4 lumber—mahogany or sapele for the natural-finished ones, and poplar for those that are ebonized. Composing with these elements, he explains, “is challenging because the contact points are very small; you need to pay attention to the structural integrity of the object.”

A former student and then employee of Wendell Castle, and for many years afterward a teacher himself, Pierobon is well versed in traditional wood joinery, but he found that the logical connections for these pieces were bolts and threaded inserts secured with epoxy.

—Jonathan Binzen

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