Artist Chung Dai

“My grandfather carved tools for rice fields. I carve shelves for homes in New York City. Same hands. Same wood. Different world.”

Chung Dai comes from the third generation of a woodworking family in Binh Dinh - a region famous for precious hardwoods and old-school craftsmanship. Around the workshop, he’s the man people trust with the hardest pieces: tree trunk furniture and log benches, the kind of work where you have to understand the whole tree before you even think about touching a chisel to it.

Not a single log bench he’s made has ever been returned.

To most craftsmen, that would sound like a proud achievement. To Chung Dai, that’s just the minimum standard for leaving the workshop.