ORIGIN COAST STUDIO is the collaborative vision of husband & wife artists, Robert Officer & Jennifer Phillips.
Dedicated to living a life of craftsmanship — where the utmost care and attention goes into building each piece, from cutting timbers in the field, to milling and finishing pieces in the wood shop — our pieces are completely hand-crafted by us from start to finish. We are self-taught woodworkers, with degrees in the fine arts and many years of experience in design, production, working with natural materials, and crafting art in many forms.
We have found working with wood to be a fulfilling medium that gives art purpose.
Our hope is that our pieces add warmth, beauty, and function to your life and that they will be passed down for generations with many stories to tell…
The view from our studio toward the ocean…
Perched in the mountains of Carmel Valley at 1800ft above sea level, on Monterey’s Central Coast, our open-air studio hums with the tantalizing excitement of discovering what each piece of wood can become through our care, craftsmanship & ingenuity. We feel truly lucky to call this our job.
We craft our pieces of functional art from sustainably-sourced reclaimed Pacific Coast woods and hand-fabricated materials, focusing on preserving live edges and textures, ensuring each piece we make is completely unique and harkens back to the origin story of the life of the tree the wood came from.
We source stunning native hardwoods & softwoods salvaged from sustainable sources — from the coast of California to the Pacific Northwest — or sourced locally from our community and milled on-site with one of our portable sawmills.
Our commitment to using only natural wood finishing hard waxes, oils and nano-thin ceramic hard coats ensures your piece never looks waxy or feels sticky, but highlights and preserves natural wood colors with a pleasant, eco-friendly and waterproof texture.
After a massive wildfire burned through our land in Carmel Valley in 2020, we were left with hundreds of dead oak trees and a vision of transforming the destruction into something beautiful.
Before the fire, the 65 acres of ridge top land we steward was densely populated with native Blue Oak, Live Oak, and a handful of Madrone species, all surrounded by thick brush, like Ceanothus, Toyon, Coffee Bush, and the highly-flammable Chemise brush. The fire decimated our Blue Oak population, and those dead trees were among the first trees we reclaimed from the fire’s destruction to mill into slabs we could work with to preserve this special and rare wood representing pieces of our land’s history.
ORIGIN COAST STUDIO was born out of seizing the moment to turn raw materials into functional works of art. Experiencing the stunning color and grain patterns inside the Blue Oak we salvaged from the fire and milled on our property sparked a passion for preserving the beauty of these wood relics by giving them a second life.
We believe devotion to our craft, years of experience in design, engineering, building, and sculpture, along with sheer perseverance and ingenuity makes the difference in the quality of our work.
— ROBERT OFFICER & JENNIFER PHILLIPS
Co-Founders, Designers & Artisans
Our Origin Story
Ethos:
Where form meets function, we forge a pathway to presence.
Our design process emerges from a humble awakening to the reality of the human experience and the grit and grace required to endure it.
Our work reflects our insistence on perfecting a clear statement of truth within each piece we create—one that speaks to our honed capacity to flow with the forces of nature and the tides of life. Our work is bold in its truth, raw and revealing of the natural beauty that surrounds us— waiting to be coaxed from the cells of the wood we craft.
We call in the kind of pieces worthy of inhabiting our daily lives – pieces carrying the strength and power derived from observing natural materials shaped and changed by nature's forces, drawing resilience from each layer of grain, curve and perfect imperfection.
We push the boundaries of design to create unexpected and original works, merging function with inspiration for the boldest and truest expression of possibility.