Hi, I'm Umar. I made everything in this shop.
UStudios is me: one person, some timber, a lot of resin. I've sold my work on Etsy as UStudios since 2018, and every piece here is handmade by me.
A stall of chopping boards, and a trip to Indonesia
I've been woodworking since I was about 12. I wasn't allowed near the power tools back then, but that didn't stop me learning everything I could.
When I was 14, I wanted to go on a month-long World Challenge expedition to Indonesia with my school. We'd have to organise everything ourselves in a foreign country. The only catch was that it cost £4,000, and I had two years to raise it.
Now you can probably guess what I did. Yep, I sold my woodwork. After a lot of thinking and a bit of guidance, it seemed a lot more viable than getting a job or packing bags at the supermarket. So, I went to every single fair I could and sold small chopping boards and platters… and it worked.
After that I kept moving through materials: woodwork, then metalwork, then resin, looking for the one that could hold what I had in my head. So far resin hasn't let me down. So when you buy one of these, what you get is a piece of my imagination.
What they're made from
The coffee tables are poplar, yew and elm. The boards are Ekki, European oak, ash, sapele, American black walnut and horse chestnut.
I use hardwood offcuts for as many pieces as I can. The poplar in the blue river table was an offcut, and all my kitchen boards are made from offcuts that would otherwise be thrown away.
Each piece took about a week to make, including the time it takes for the resin to properly cure.
See what's still here
Everything in the shop is finished, and there's one of each. If a piece you like has sold, you can request something like it.
See what's in stock