She produces everything herself, by hand, without any assistants in her studio. For a bowl, she typically starts with a block of wood, inspects it for cracks and knots, trims it down to size on a bandsaw or chainsaw, and then cuts it into a round blank that gets mounted onto a lathe—a tool which rotates an object on an axis. She shapes exterior of the bowl, sands the exterior, then mounts it onto a chuck to turn the inside using a bowl gouge. After mounting the bowl onto a cole jaw to remove the tenon (a stump of the wood that's used to mount the bowl to the chuck), Song then applies oil and wax to the finished piece. She typically uses sugar maple and claro walnut, two woods that are readily available. "Sugar maple is quite dense and the grains are very consistent whereas Walnut is much more porous," she describes. Photo 5 of 8 in Designer Spotlight: Silvia Song

Designer Spotlight: Silvia Song

5 of 8

She produces everything herself, by hand, without any assistants in her studio. For a bowl, she typically starts with a block of wood, inspects it for cracks and knots, trims it down to size on a bandsaw or chainsaw, and then cuts it into a round blank that gets mounted onto a lathe—a tool which rotates an object on an axis. She shapes exterior of the bowl, sands the exterior, then mounts it onto a chuck to turn the inside using a bowl gouge. After mounting the bowl onto a cole jaw to remove the tenon (a stump of the wood that's used to mount the bowl to the chuck), Song then applies oil and wax to the finished piece. She typically uses sugar maple and claro walnut, two woods that are readily available. "Sugar maple is quite dense and the grains are very consistent whereas Walnut is much more porous," she describes.