We have just launched the Signature collection, a new corner of Tohfa Shofa for handcrafted pieces that sit closer to my own studio practice.
These are works I spend more time with personally, from the first drawing to the final layers, and they bring together a lot of the things I naturally return to as an artist: illustration, depth, colour, material and the process of building an image by hand. The collection is very personal because working with wood has shaped the way I think about making for a very long time.
Some of my earliest lessons in making came from watching my father build furniture for our home. He had a regular job, but he was always making something, and I grew up around tools, measurements, pieces of timber and the patience required to get things right. A surprising amount of the furniture he built is still in our home today.
What stayed with me was not only the woodworking, but the discipline behind it. Wood teaches you quickly that having an idea and knowing how to execute it are two very different things. Measurements matter. Tools behave differently in different hands. Materials have limits, and if you ignore them, the finished piece usually tells you.
Years later, as I began developing my own work as a self-taught artist, I found myself using wood more and more. My first sculpture was Ganesha, and making it gave me the confidence to push the material further. Over time, I became especially interested in layering, using separate cut forms to build depth while still retaining the graphic quality of an illustration.
That process changed the way I design. A line that works beautifully on paper may become difficult to cut. A shape may need to change because the wood will not hold it. Grain, thickness, joinery and finishing all begin influencing decisions that originally felt purely visual. I enjoy that negotiation because the material often takes the idea somewhere I would not have reached through drawing alone.
That is also what makes the Signature collection feel different to me. These pieces are not simply illustrations translated into wood. They are shaped by the material, by the way each layer comes together, and by the small decisions that happen while making them.
I also want this to remain a growing collection rather than something we design to a fixed calendar. I will keep adding to it as new ideas take shape, but not everything I make needs to become a product. Some pieces may stay with me or find another purpose, while others may feel ready to leave the studio and find a new home. Those are the ones that will become part of this collection.
I work across many mediums, and I am sure that will continue. But this collection gives me a space within Tohfa Shofa to keep returning to a way of making that has influenced me from the very beginning.
