Is This Real?: Sawkille Co. and Jonah Meyer

Founded and owned by Jonah Meyer and Tara DeLisio, Sawkille Co. is known for its meticulous craftsmanship and deeply rooted commitment to sustainable production. All works are handmade in Sawkille’s Kingston, New York workshop using locally sourced wood from the surrounding Hudson Valley forests. The visible hand of the maker remains central to each piece, underscoring a belief that objects gain character through time, use, and care. Is This Real? highlights recent developments in Meyer’s practice, shaped in part by time spent in the American West. Desert landscapes have introduced new iconography and spatial ideas, visible in deeply carved motifs, refined animal forms rendered in silver, and an expanded body of wall-mounted and sculptural works. While recurring patterns appear across media, their translation – from drawing to carving to metal – produces subtle shifts that emphasize process as a generative force.

Meyer is the co-owner, designer and artist behind Sawkille Co., and has a background in fine art painting and sculpture, as well as woodworking. His identity as an artist was formed in the fields of Pennsylvania, where creativity and artistry met face on with the practicalities of homesteading in the seventies. Meyer sensed early on that being an artist was his true path, and was encouraged by his parents, a potter and a goldsmith, who were pursuing their dreams of homesteading and respective crafts. Meyer graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and moved to the Hudson Valley, where he generated his own version of sustaining life through art. Meyer sold his first chair design to one of his art school professors, which fueled further exploration of chairs, first with twigs and roots and heavily organic shapes. Influences range from Shaker furniture and Scandinavian design to masters such as George Nakashima, Wharton Esherick, and Sam Maloof. Like these predecessors, Meyer draws from tradition not as a fixed style, but as an open-ended framework for continued exploration. Together, the works in Is This Real?  present a cohesive yet ever-evolving practice – one that honors craftsmanship, embraces experimentation, and allows furniture, sculpture, and ornament to exist in dynamic conversation.