Most of my work starts at the end. Before a single sketch, I usually have a clear image of the finished piece already in mind, and the process is about working backward from there.
That means moving repeatedly through the individual components: the joinery, the proportions, the material, the way one part meets the next. Each pass raises questions that need answering before the next one can begin, so research runs alongside the design rather than before it. A detail that seems settled early on often gets revisited once another part of the piece changes shape around it.
It is not a linear process, and it is not meant to be. The piece only comes together once every component has been tested against that original image and against each other, until the whole holds up the way it did in my mind at the start.
