From Damsbo Forest to the Shoemaker Chair: A Danish Material Trail

Shoemaker Chair oak provenance traces to one forest: Form & Refine's Shoemaker Chair No. 49 is turned and carved from solid oak grown at Damsbo Forest, a privately managed wood on the Danish island of Funen. The relationship began by chance rather than by procurement — Form & Refine's founders met the family behind the forest early in the company's history, and the timber trail from there has stayed short ever since: one forest, one regional joinery, one seat carved from a single block.

A forest met by chance

Form & Refine was founded in Copenhagen in 2018 by Helle Herman Mortensen, Jonas Herman Pedersen and Lasse Lund Lauridsen, on a stated preference for natural materials sourced close to home. In an interview with Really Well Made, the founders described how that material story began: they "met the family behind the Damsbo Forest by chance," and the encounter changed how they thought about timber. "We realised how dear a 130 [year] old oak tree really is," they said — a scale of thinking that only makes sense once you have stood next to a tree that old and understood how long a forest takes to grow one. Damsbo Forest sits on Funen, the island between Zealand and Jutland that has supplied Danish furniture-making for generations. Speaking to Nordic Notes, co-founder Lasse Lund Lauridsen described it as the source of the "beautiful Danish ash, maple and oak" that neighbouring workshops and local craftspeople draw on to build the house's furniture.

One block of Funen oak, one Shoemaker Chair seat

The Shoemaker Chair No. 49 predates Form & Refine by more than eighty years. It has been made in Denmark since 1936 by the Werner family joinery, now in its second generation under Lars Werner, and Form & Refine carries the stool largely unchanged rather than having designed it. What changes with each stool is the wood itself: the seat is shaped from a single solid piece of timber, carved rather than assembled, so the grain pattern on every stool is unique to that one board. Form & Refine's own product listing for the No. 49 credits Damsbo Forest as the source of the oak, which keeps the chair's supply chain inside the same short trail as the house's own designs — forest, regional workshop, one seat. The oak edition Objena carries is finished in natural oil, measures 53 cm wide, 49 cm high and 40 cm deep, and weighs 3.8 kg.

Forest management that plants ahead of the saw

Damsbo Forest is privately managed, and Form & Refine's founders describe its harvest as deliberately uneven: "one year we could plant over 10,000 new trees, and then perhaps less the next, all depending on how the forest is developing." The logic is patience rather than yield — a forest cut to a fixed annual quota can't grow a tree that takes well over a century to mature, so planting scales to what the land can support that year, not to what a workshop needs to keep running. The same restraint carries into how far the timber travels afterward. Form & Refine states plainly that its European partners use wood "grown domestically or in nearby countries" and that the house does not use oak sourced from North America, a position aimed at keeping transport — and the emissions that come with it — to a minimum. The house's furniture carries FSC® certification under licence code C132484, the auditable record that ties a finished piece back to a managed forest rather than an unverified sustainability claim.

What the trail means for an Australian buyer

None of this changes what the Shoemaker Chair costs to bring to Australia: Objena catalogues the No. 49 in oak at an indicative AUD 1,320, reflecting import parity rather than a local retail discount, since no Australian retailer currently stocks Form & Refine. What it does change is what a buyer can check before paying that price. A forest name, an island, a licence code and a founder's own account of meeting the timber's source are all things that can be verified independently, rather than taken on the strength of a hangtag. For a stool built to outlast the room it's bought for, that is closer to the point than the finish.

Objena carries the Shoemaker Chair No. 49 in oak, and the wider case for how Form & Refine sources and builds runs through our house chapter on Form & Refine.

Three questions

Where does the oak in Form & Refine's Shoemaker Chair No. 49 come from? From Damsbo Forest, a privately managed wood on the Danish island of Funen. Form & Refine's founders met the family behind the forest by chance early in the company's history, and it has supplied oak, ash and maple to the house and its network of regional workshops since.

Who makes the Shoemaker Chair No. 49, and is it a Form & Refine design? No — it was designed by the Werner family joinery in 1936, now in its second generation under Lars Werner, and has been made in Denmark continuously since. Form & Refine carries the stool within its collection rather than having designed it themselves, and its own listing credits Damsbo Forest as the source of the oak.

How does Damsbo Forest's management affect the timber's sustainability? The forest is managed by what the land can support each year rather than by a fixed quota — Form & Refine's founders describe planting over 10,000 trees in some years and fewer in others, prioritising long-term growth over annual yield. Form & Refine also states it does not use oak imported from North America, and its furniture carries FSC® certification under licence code C132484.