It’s okay, you can say it: Woodworking as a job title in 2016 is about as valid as “bookshop owner” or “postman”. It’s a craft that peaked in the 19th century when horse-led carriages, mustache wax and Civil War were all the rage.
Since then, woodworking has mostly disappeared as a job title in a plume of sawdust memories given the rise of Ikea, the Internet and idiot-proof furniture design. That’s why Nathie Katzoff really is more of a master craftsman than woodworker as it turns out. An “iconoclastic carpenter punk” one might say – a phrase that holds as much water as his curvaceous, rule-defying wooden bathtubs. That’s right — wooden bathtubs.
But if you think this 28-year-old millennial with a 200-year-old soul is not a study in contrasts, think again. For one, he sleeps standing up, which I’m guessing is different than the horizontal position you probably opt for. More notably perhaps, Katzoff has become well-known for building things that defy convention. That is, floating staircases with rounded edges so extraordinary you can’t help but scale them in awe of their beauty.
And then there are the aforementioned bathtubs that have more curves than the people that inhabit them. The thing with Katzoff, he’s not afraid to try things that haven’t been done before. He sees the word ‘no’ as a challenge. Much like experimental jazz (which he calls out as an influence) or renegade artists like Picasso, Warhol, or say The Fountainhead‘s Howard Roark. “My life is work and my work is my life,” says Katzoff.
It may sound slightly cliche, but the proof is in the carving. Take his first staircase for example. Four years ago, fresh off a stint as a shipwright in Maine — Katzoff’s first exposure to the marriage between wood and water — Katzoff returned home to Seattle, volunteering to help a friend build a staircase.
Katzoff threw his heart, soul and vision into the project. It ended up winning the prestigious SMA award for design.
That was his first staircase.
“Stairs are put together like Legos [nowadays] and furniture is mass-produced and not expected to last,” says Katzoff. “If you’re going to build something and it’s going to last for 200 years versus building something that’s going to last 10 years… the materials, the scale actually broadens what you can use.”
Since his first award, Nathan has done what he can to up his game even further. His shop NK Woodworking & Design has gone onto win many other awards while becoming one of the most sought-after woodworking studios in the country. It’s also doubled and then tripled in size — currently employing 25 people and some of the most masterful woodworkers in the trade. A nice turn of events for a kid who went dumpster diving in his teens and spent lots of time sleeping outdoors. With the trees who would eventually bestow their wood to his masterpieces.
“I didn’t have the passion behind it early on. And then as soon as I had the opportunity to build these beautiful pieces with compounding sweeping curves and kinda seeing the structure of something, it just became really captivating and I fell in love with it,” says Katzoff.
Have a beer with Nathie Katzoff, you’ll probably hear a lot of words that don’t mean much to you. Phrases like “complex geometry” may make you think of homework. But that’s okay, because you can have faith that whatever he builds — be it a staircase or a sentence — is probably constructed with more precision than say, a normal person. He sounds like an artist in its purest form — and if you doubt that, there are lots of large-scale drawings around his Emerald City office warehouse to prove it.
“I didn’t get into this out of an interest in capitalism. I got into this out of interest in craft.” That said, a Nathie Katzoff original may not be stairway to heaven per se… but it’s as close as you’re going to get.
