About Us

Hi there, I’m Mark & welcome to Deer River Craftsman….we are a custom furniture/crafts business based in Conwy, North Wales.

We also design & make small outbuildings, such as offices, summerhouses & small agricultural dwellings like field shelters. My goal is to make great pieces based on the clients needs & desires when doing commission work, making it personal & unique. We also sell items we have designed, including one-off pieces where the materials are often reclaimed & recycled making a re-production difficult - check out our store for made to order pieces (and a few one-off items every now & then). I work with a range of materials including wood, metal, glass, leather & plastics - here are some of the services we provide…

Custom Built Furniture & Fittings for the Home, Office or Garden
Bespoke Signage for Businesses, Public Spaces & Homes
Personalised Arts & Crafts (e.g. cutting boards & ornaments)
Outbuildings & Garden Offices

I want to inspire & educate (and keep learning myself!) so I have joined the “maker community” - a global network of like-minded artists & makers, sharing their work & passion on social media, primarily via YouTube & Instagram - check out my project videos, building hints & tips, plus tool reviews in my blog…

Thanks for stopping by! If you’re interested in commissioning a piece of furniture or anything else, please hit the contact link (top right)

If you want to get an idea of how I work first, click on Custom Work on the menu, review some previous projects where I cover our process & give you some indicative pricing for custom work, so you get a sense of affordability…

Background

I have been making & designing custom furniture for both the home & garden for over 20 years, mainly for personal use in the early days, then for friends & family, expanding to commissioned client work a few years ago. In the last three years I have designed & built three buildings for my smallholding in North Wales. Firstly a 10m2 timber frame animal shelter, then my office & gym at 35m2 (375 sqft). My dream has always been to have my own workshop, to build custom furniture & crafts in a professional maker space - in 2018 I built it! In December (2018) I finished my 144m2 (1,550 sqft) timber frame workshop & in January 2019 I launched this business! Check out my blog for a detailed description of how I built the workshop

Why Deer River Craftsman? Well, the workshop is located in a woodland above Afon Ceirw, translated to English as Deer River. The craftsman part is two fold, the workshop was designed in “Craftsman style”, timber clad, with a front porch, exposed trusses & a rear deck (overlooking the river), and secondly, we use a range of materials to design and make our work, so the craftsman title seemed more appropriate than “woodworking” or “metalworks”

While building the workshop I discovered the “maker community” on Instagram & YouTube, and was inspired by the passion and skills of the people displaying their talent & art in an inclusive way - I decided to document my workshop build on Instagram (check out “Workshop” in My Stories), but I also decided that content creation was something that greatly interested me, so we started a YouTube channel, in addition to the shorter clips & photos I’m already posting on Instagram…check those out here —>