Against The Grain

As Pierre Cronje, one of SA’s most iconic furniture makers, prepares for a new chapter, his eponymous brand looks to take a bold new direction.

- Piet Smedy

The Americans just don’t get it, this wood. You’ll see these bundles, how neat and tidy they’ve cut them into these little planks, all to one length so that they can grade them. The French, they say, “you buy the tree, we’ll rough saw it and reassemble it, and you do what you want with it” – and that’s what we do with our yellowwood here, too. We work mostly with French Oak, some Ash and the remainder is what is dictated by fashion.’ When Pierre Cronje speaks about his craft, even something as simple as the sawing of a tree into planks, he captivates like a lumber mill Anthony Hopkins.

To set foot into his sprawling Cape Town workshop is to enter a cathedral of carpentry, where hooded monks are replaced by hurried workers in overalls, their faces half-hidden behind dust masks against the swirling sawdust, and the melody of bells becomes the humming of machinery and the whirring of timber-hungry blades. The feeling of reverence is the same.