About Riana

Nobody thought this was a real job

My name is Riana. I pour resin onto walnut in a room that was supposed to be a spare bedroom, and for a long time that was the least serious thing about me.

It started as a way to stop thinking. One board, badly poured, full of bubbles, for my own kitchen. I made another one to fix what I got wrong. Then another. Somewhere around the twentieth I stopped being embarrassed to show people.

The reaction I got most often was some version of that's nice, but what do you actually do? Not unkindly. Just — a hobby is a hobby. Materials cost money, the room smelled of epoxy for two years, and every board took most of a season to finish. Nobody was waiting for these. There was no reason to keep going except that I could not stop.

That was the whole turning point. Not a business plan — a handful of people who had never met me deciding that something I made by hand was worth having in their kitchen. This shop exists because of them, and it keeps existing the same way: one person at a time choosing to back someone who makes things slowly.

Why yours takes six to nine weeks

Because there is one of me, and your board does not exist until you order it.

I do not keep stock. I do not run batches. When your order comes in, I start it: I choose the walnut, mix the pigment, lay the artwork, pour, wait, sand, oil and pack it. Nobody else touches it. The pour is done by eye, which means I could not reproduce your board if you asked me to — and that is the part I am proudest of. Yours is genuinely the only one.

It also means you can talk to me. Not to a support queue — to the person holding the sandpaper. If you are buying for a birthday, tell me the date and I will tell you honestly whether I can make it. If you are torn between two designs, describe your kitchen and I will tell you which one I would send. If something arrives wrong, I am the one who fixes it, and I would rather remake a board than argue about it.

The five stages of your board

Step 01

Choosing the wood

Every board starts as a plank of solid walnut. I go through them one at a time and set aside only the pieces with grain worth looking at. Most get put back.

Step 02

Mixing the resin

Pigment goes in by eye, never by recipe. I have never once repeated a batch exactly — which is precisely why no two boards will ever match.

Step 03

Laying the artwork

The design is built up by hand inside the mould, piece by piece, until it sits exactly where it should. The slowest, most stubborn part of the whole process.

Step 04

The pour

Resin goes in, and then it waits. Days of nothing visibly happening, in a room nobody is allowed to walk through quickly. This is most of the six to nine weeks.

Step 05

Finished, by hand

Sanded grit after grit until you cannot feel the seam between resin and wood, then oiled until the walnut goes dark. I pack it and write your name on the label myself.