December 7th 10am- 5pm: Design, Community, and Inspiration

Sunday, December 7th, we’re teaming up with Rivian at their Venice Showroom for an event that blends craftsmanship, conversation, conservation, and some sweet EVs.

Join us for an afternoon of appreciation of furniture design and electric vehicle design and enjoy coffee & refreshments. The Rivian team will be offering test drives throughout the event. If interested, please sign up in advance using the link below. It’s a chance to get behind the wheel, meet their crew, and experience what a more sustainable future on the road can feel like.

Inside the space, you’ll get a first look at several not-yet-photographed KEITA pieces, fresh off the benches. As always, everything is crafted from local fallen hardwoods, shaped with care and built to last.

Come enjoy the space, the work, the vehicles, and the creative community of environmental innovators that we’re lucky to be part of.

We’d love to see you there!

Rivian, Venice 660 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Rivian x KEITA: 2025 Furniture Exhibition

Experience Keita Design’s latest furniture collection, responsibly made in Los Angeles using urban lumber, and exhibiting the clean lines and thoughtful utility of contemporary, sustainable design.

When: SUNDAY DECEMBER 7th 2025 10am- 5pm

Where: 660 VENICE BLVD, VENICE, CA 90291

~~~~~~ RSVP HERE ~~~~~~

Special open house for our architect and interior designer friends

We’re hosting a special open house for our architect and interior designer friends!

KEITA is hosting a private open house and sale featuring the remaining furniture from our first collection. If you’re seeking distinctive, sustainably made pieces for your clients or collection, we’d love for you to join us at our Lincoln Heights shop on Friday, October 10th and Saturday October 11th.

This is a private event at our maker space, so entry is coordinated in advance. Please reach out here or email hello@keitadesign.com to RSVP and receive gate details.

If you would like to attend but can’t make it, let us know and we’ll find another time.

Here’s a sneak peak of our remaining inventory!

KEITA at Frogtown Brewery: Los Angeles Design Weekend

LA Design Weekend is back, and we’re excited to announce that KEITA will be part of the celebration on Saturday, September 27, from 12-4pm at Frogtown Brewery. It’s going to be a relaxed furniture showcase in the brewery’s tasting room. Come by to grab a drink, hang out, enjoy the craftsmanship, and see our latest pieces up close.

This event is more than a show. LA Design Weekend is a weekend-long grassroots celebration of the city’s design community, broken up into walkable, neighborhood-based activations. Studios, showrooms, installations, workshops- all of it built around creativity and accessibility. LOS ANGELES DESIGN WEEKEND

At KEITA, we’ll be bringing some of our favorite pieces to represent us. Furniture that’s built to last, where every tabletop and joinery detail holds a story of material, place, and process. We invite you not just to see what we make, but to understand how we make it.

Community is at the heart of this weekend and this event. We’re grateful for places like Big Art Labs and other local maker spaces that support artists and designers doing hands-on work in Los Angeles. Events like LA Design Weekend give us a chance to connect. Come join us at Frogtown Brewery. Let’s share ideas, enjoy good company, and celebrate design that’s rooted in place.

See You There: KEITA at the Pasadena Art Walk

Come on over to the Pasadena Playhouse District on September 20th between 11am-6pm to check out KEITA in person, and participate in an event that celebrates Art in all it’s forms. The Pasadena Art Walk is an indie artisan fair, where local culture meets craft. Presented and organized by Jackalope Arts. Visit their website to learn more.

Click the flyer for event details

Pasadena Art Walk Flyer

Below are a few of the pieces you can expect to find at the Pasadena Art Walk. In addition, we have brand new, not-yet-photographed work that we are excited to debut.

This event is full of incredible local craft and talent. We can’t wait to enjoy with all who attend.

Sincerely,

Bill, Eric, Jordan, Hannah, Jessie, Chris

Getting Technical: A KEITA project from start to finish

Every KEITA piece starts with raw material selection, and the Hannah Table is no exception. We first picked two air dried slabs from a beautiful urban harvested oak tree. By laying them out, and experimenting with configurations we found a composition that felt balanced and had character. We then cut each slab down to a width that could be flattened on the jointer, revealing the surface grain hidden beneath years of weathering.

With the slabs prepped, we laid the pieces out again to evaluate their grain, structure, and thickness, and finalized the alignment and edge shape. Once satisfied with this we edge-jointed them and reinforced the seam with biscuits. A glue-up followed, clamping the slabs together to form a seamless tabletop. This process of flattening one side with the jointer and glueing up planks of uneven thickness preserves the maximum thickness of the tabletop components by leaving one side “wild”. We then smoothed the discontinuities of the underside to create an undulating bottom surface which serves as a record of the process of fabrication. After letting the joined wood cure for a few weeks, we refined the edge shape by first cutting an MDF template as a guide and then pattern routing the table edges. We then used a large and deeply beveled router bit to create the thin-edge beveled profile.

Designing and fabricating the table base was a project of its own. Before selecting oak stock, we created a prototype entirely out of poplar to assess the design and make any alterations we saw fit. Once the kinks had been worked out, we created a cut list and pulled lumber at the correct thickness from our stock of urban lumber. Each piece was jointed and planed, ensuring perfect geometry before moving forward. Our neighbor Ivan at Obsydian Studios offered his CNC (Computer Numerical Control) setup to cut a template for the leg profiles. The 2.5” thick legs were rough cut on the band saw and then pattern routed using the template. At the top of each leg we cut a diamond tenon which projects through the table top. We also milled the connecting beams to their final dimensions and milled mortises into the end grain for the connections to the legs and the central cross bar.

Then came assembly. We glued the mortise and tenon leg structure together, then rounded every edge with a router to create a smooth, sinuous profile. Since the table design included through-tenons which would be visible as part of the table top. We cut the mortises in the table underside with precision to match the diamond tenons by taking the fully assembled legs and tracing each tenon onto the table top. We then cut them with a precision pattern routing guide.

Once assembled, we moved into finish sanding, moving through progressively finer grits to bring out the grain. We applied a first coat of natural finishing oil, allowed it to cure for 12 hours, then followed by a second coat. The tabletop received the same treatment, each coat bringing richness to the grain and enhancing the warmth of the wood.

Finally, the top was placed onto the base. The mortises and tenons aligned perfectly, letting the two components sit together without the need for screws or bolts. The result is a table that is as strong as it is beautiful, grounded in centuries-old joinery techniques and made entirely from urban hardwood.

The Hannah Table reflects KEITA’s belief in creating heirloom-quality furniture that honors the material’s origins. Each step is guided by the idea that craftsmanship is a conversation between the maker and the material.

Story Time with KEITA: How a Kitten Named a Company

On a late afternoon last January our woodworker, Jessie, was visiting a neighboring workshop when a faint meow could be heard from behind a tool chest and two wary eyes peeked out through the shadows. With a handful of food scraps and a good dose of patience, she slowly coaxed out a small, scrappy kitten. Her name as given by the mechanic was “Makita,” after the tools that surrounded her - “Keita” for short.

First ever image captured of the illusive shop kitten

… 2 hours later

We were a new woodworking venture - still hunting for the right name. We’d gone through pages of ideas, when this little rescue landed in our lives, and KEITA the brand took shape. She came as a reminder that unexpected moments can guide us toward something lasting.

We had just moved into our space at Big Art Labs, a hub of maker studios in Downtown Los Angeles. The day we found Keita, help came from every direction. We quickly learned that the surrounding community is as much a resource as the raw materials we work with.

Big Art Labs- Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles

Building 3- Home of Keita Design wood working studio

Our work is more than crafting beautiful, lasting furniture from reclaimed wood. It’s about the relationships between maker and material, natural history and thoughtful design, and the communities that make it all possible.

Keita came to us at just the right time to give a name to the vision we were about to bring to life.

After a little clean up and a vet appointment Keita the cat is living the good life with Jessie at her new home in Glassell Park.

The Day of Discovery! An instant connection.

Bathtime.

KEITA, Carbon & Urban Ecology in Los Angeles

There are many reasons that a tree may be removed from the urban landscape. Some fall in windstorms, some are removed for construction, and some are removed due to obstruction of roads and footpaths. The urban canopy of Los Angeles is home to many species of vegetation that endure harsh drought cycles, pruning, and compact soils. Among these species are the hardwoods that we use to make our furniture. The particular history of each tree is evident in its trunks and branches. Live Oak grows slowly, developing dense rings and ray flecks. Eucalyptus often displays vibrant swirls, checks, and knots born from rapid early growth and seasonal shock. These visual markers are archives of a tree’s nature and nurture- it’s life story. At Keita, we treat the tree as a design collaborator by responding to its growth patterns, letting its history and nature shape form and function.

Beyond being beautiful, urban trees play an essential role in climate regulation. In the City of Los Angeles, our 6 million urban trees store 1.3 million tons of carbon in their biomass. This is equivalent to ~4.7 million tons of CO₂. A recent USC Dornsife study found that L.A.’s trees offset up to 60% of daytime fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in summer and about 30% annually. When urban hardwoods such as the Live Oak, Eucalyptus, Black Locust, and Chinese Elm in our inventory are reclaimed and crafted into durable furnishings, that stored carbon remains locked in.

These efforts are a working arm of urban ecology, the study of how living organisms function in human-built environments. Renewable energy, water regulation, pollution filtration, and support for biodiversity all fall under this umbrella. Urban trees supply critical ecosystem services. They filter air pollutants, reduce heat islands, manage stormwater, and support biodiversity. Learn more about the avenues of urban ecology at UrbanEcologyProject.com.

At KEITA, we honor the full lifecycle of our materials, support local craftsmanship, and create exquisite items that showcase the lived history of our urban canopy. The result is heirloom-quality works that invite deeper connection between natural history and thoughtful design. Crafted with care and grounded in sustainable practice.