The atelier

We are a small workshop in Jiaxing, west of Shanghai. We make ten wooden construction
sets and nothing else — no kits, no accessories, no seasonal line. Each set is designed on
the same bench it is prototyped on, and the tenth one is the only one that is furniture.

Why wooden, and why mechanisms

Plywood is a strange material to build a mechanism from: it moves with the weather, it
is not perfectly homogeneous, and it will never be as precise as brass. That is the reason
it makes a good teacher. When a wooden gear train binds, you can see why — the frame is
out of square, or a shaft is not seated, or the sheet was cut from a different batch. The
material tells you the truth instead of hiding it inside a moulded housing.

Everything we make is press-fit or pinned with brass. Nothing is glued, screwed or
clicked into place. A set holds together because the geometry is right, and it comes apart
again for the same reason.

How a set is made

Each set starts as a drawing, then a card model, then a ply prototype that someone has
to build at a kitchen table and complain about. What survives that gets a parts list, a
sheet layout and a manual. The manual is written last, by the person who built the
prototype, and it is deliberately shorter than it could be: after the third or fourth stage
we stop explaining and let the object do the teaching.

What we do not do

• We do not put a brand on the wood. The parts carry a sheet number, not a logo.
• We do not publish certifications we have not paid for. EN71 and ASTM F963 test reports
  exist for every set in the catalogue and are available on request.
• We do not sell through marketplaces. Ten sets, one shop, one parts desk.
• We do not claim a founding date we cannot evidence. The workshop has been cutting ply
  for this catalogue since 2019.

The company

OAKWRIGHT is the trading name of Jiaxing Miaozi E-Commerce Co., Ltd. (嘉兴淼紫电子商务有限公司), registered in Zhejiang, China.
The workshop, the parts desk and the returns address are all at Nanhu District, Jiaxing, Zhejiang 314000, China. You can reach a
person — not a form — at miaozijiaxing@outlook.com or +86 188 1394 0946.

If a set is not worth keeping on a shelf after it is finished, we should not be
selling it. That is the whole editorial policy.