I'm Rafał. Glajson has been my name online since 1996 — longer than most things I own. The name came first, the workshop came later. Both still here.
The wood I use is already on the ground when I find it. Windfall from storms. Sanitary felling. A neighbor with an old chestnut that has to go. Sometimes a roadside tree that was coming down anyway. Nothing is cut for me. Nothing is imported. The material was already there — I just give it a second life as something to live with.
Most days look like this: drive to the workshop, look at a log, decide which way it wants to be cut, and start. No team. No supply chain. One log, one pair of hands, one piece at a time. If a slice cracks badly in drying, I keep it for myself. If it cracks beautifully, it becomes a table.
The slabs sit for a year, sometimes longer. They dry on their own time. I don't speed anything up. There are no batches of fifty, no production runs, no inventory in a warehouse somewhere. When a piece is ready, it's ready. When the wood isn't, it isn't.
This isn't a business model that scales. It's a way of working that I'd do anyway. The fact that someone wants to live with what I make is a happy accident, and a reason to keep doing it.
If anything I make ever needs care or repair, write me directly. The maker is still here, and reachable. That's part of what you buy.
The workshop sits on a clearing near Łacha — a village in eastern Poland surrounded by oak, ash, and chestnut.
Nothing is cut down for what I make. The wood comes from what was already going to fall, fall apart, or be cleared. Windfall after storms. Trees that died standing. Sanitary felling done by foresters. Old chestnuts and oaks that neighbors needed gone from their land.
This isn't a sustainability claim. It's just how this works. I'm one person, working slowly, using material that's already available. Mass production needs forests cut on schedule. I don't have a schedule. The wood arrives when it arrives.
One bench. Hand tools and a few power tools. No automation. The slowness is the point — and the limit. I can't make more than I can make.
Most of the work is waiting. The wood does most of it — I just guide it through four stages, slowly, over the course of a year or more.
Storms come through and drop oaks. Foresters mark dead ash for sanitary felling. A neighbor calls about a chestnut that has to come down. I look at what's there, decide what each log could become. Nothing is cut for me — only used.
Cut the slice. Stack it under shelter. Let it dry naturally for twelve to eighteen months. Fast kiln-drying cracks the rings. Slow drying respects them.
Hand plane the surface flat. Sand through six grits from 80 to 400. Three coats of food-safe linseed oil over two weeks, rubbed in by hand. Then mount the legs.
Burn the maker's mark into the underside — following the rings the tree already grew. Numbered. Dated. The last decision before a piece leaves the workshop.
Look at the mark on the underside of a finished piece. Four of the lines form the peace symbol — vertical, plus two diagonals down. One or two extra lines disguise it as a sunburst.
It's not loud. It's not political. Just there — a small intention burned into wood, made for the home, made to outlast its maker.
I read every message. Commissions, custom pieces, questions about wood, drying times, or just to say hello — everything comes to the same inbox.
Pieces are made in small batches. If you want something specific, the earlier you write, the better the wood I can find for it.