Workshop visit
The workshop sits in a back yard between a print shop and a bike store. Jonas Ehlert has built chairs, tables and shelves here for eleven years, almost all of them from regional oak and ash. New customers usually come because of a chair that seems beyond saving.
A chair you can repair three times costs less than three chairs.
He looks closely at every chair before he names a price. Most of the time it is two loose joints and a cracked seat, an hour of work and a little glue. A third of his orders are repairs, and many of them later turn into a table.
He sells his chairs with a card that says which wood went in and how to loosen the glue. Whoever asks another joiner in twenty years should not have to guess. That keeps the furniture repairable, even if the workshop closes one day.