Raised Platter (Black Walnut)

Walk in the Park is the studio practice of Woo-Lam (Sam) Choi, an Auckland-based artist and designer trained in woodworking and furniture design at Hong-ik University in Seoul. Sam came to wood-turning in 2016, and his practice has since developed into something singular. Each object is hand-turned in his studio from timbers chosen for their grain, provenance, and the way they respond to the lathe. The work sits at the meeting point of form and function. Bowls, vessels, salt pigs, and pepper mills each carry the logic of their making in their surface: the fluted cylinder, the turned sphere, the contrast of two woods held together. These are not decorative choices but considered ones, arrived at through material and process. Sam works with timbers that have their own stories. Among them, swamp kauri, recovered from the peat bogs of Northland after tens of thousands of years, and French oak, walnut, and ash, each chosen for what they bring in colour, grain, and character. No two pieces are identical. Natural marks and variations are understood as part of the work, not incidental to it. Tessuti carries a selection of Walk in the Park pieces, objects that earn their place on a table or bench and improve with daily use.