Meet Chris Wilson of Live Edge Lust – Handcrafted Artisan Designs in Central

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Wilson.

Chris, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I first started LEL designs back in 2017 in a small one car garage in a condo complex I was currently residing in at the time in the city Scottsdale, AZ. I was the GM of a small franchised auto spa for just shy of 10 years and if I’m being honest with myself I was feeling and having the thought of “This is it? This is my legacy, the car wash guy?” I was so bored artistically, I was consumed with running a business for someone else to keep my own bills paid I hadn’t thought about what I truly wanted in my life, what did I want to be known for? What was going to make me happy? I had a past of drug and alcohol abuse that led me down the wrong paths so many times, I didn’t know where my future was going to take me, if anywhere. I’ll tell you that woodworking and furniture design were the last things I would have thought about. My girlfriend at the time (now wife) wanted me to make a mantle for above the fireplace, so I was tasked with finding a piece of wood to suit this design she was after, I’m not in this industry, I don’t know where to even start to look for something like her reference photo, Home Depot? I turned to craigslist and found a local mill in Arizona, ran out of a retired military man’s backyard.

Fast forward a few days and here I find myself looking through all these really cool local Arizona Desert hardwood live edge slabs, looking for a piece for a mantle, well I didn’t come home with one, but I did come home with three cookie-shaped slabs that I worked on tirelessly in my condo garage with all the tools I had at the time, which consisted of a harbor freight sander and an old skill saw from my pops. That’s where my love began, I ended up making 8 or 10 coffee and end table pieces, almost chisel off my left thumb and now my condo had way too many coffee tables in it haha so I was now tasked on how to figure out how I could sell them, I wanted to see if people liked my designs and again had no idea how to make this happen, my girlfriend came up with the idea to join Phoenix flea market, so with a little research that’s just what we did, we signed up prepared for the show for a few weeks and 3 hours in we had everything sold! That’s when I knew I had something to run with, not only was this profitable but it was crazy fun! The car wash ended up being sold to a big corporate company and my new lifestyle as an artist perused!

Here we are in 2020 and we’ve grown from a small garage ran business selling small local hardwood furniture, to now commissioning furniture pieces for clients as far as Saudi Arabia and Canada to working with corporate and hospitality clients across the United States, we primarily craft custom live edge and dimensional tables such as Dining & Conference tables, with new designs being implemented all the time such as Hanging & pivot doors, live edge headboards, wall art, kitchen island’s, glass and epoxy inlay tables such as river tables and the list goes on. Our studio is situated centrally in the valley in the famous art district off of Roosevelt street. We are a fully custom handcrafted furniture studio with extremely rare live edge slabs from across the world ready to take on their second life! We craft timeless heirloom pieces that not only are great conversation pieces but will continue to make a bold statement for years to come, we love what we do and our dream is becoming a reality!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
We have had many ups and downs building our business, they call us starving artists for a reason. This industry is all about who you know, and we knew no one! I was working around 45-50 hrs a week in my shop while holding a 30 hr a week serving position at a restaurant. It was a struggle, we were tired and had a few months that we didn’t get a single phone call or email, it was scary. When you’ve spent most of your life having financial security to jumping in an industry you know nothing about except that’s where you want to be you learn a lot of painful, expensive, and sometimes incredibly defeating lessons, but there is no easy lessons learned in life worth building on, so we hold fast!

Please tell us about Live Edge Lust – Handcrafted Artisan Designs.
Live Edge Lust Handcrafted Artisan Designs crafts one of a kind bold statement pieces of furniture, such as… Live Edge dining tables, glass inlay river tables, resin epoxy casted tables, bar-tops, live edge headboards, boardroom & conference tables, community tables and benches for large and small hospitality, corporate and private clients. Custom made to your specs, we work with every client closely on designing the perfect piece for their space!

I think what sets us apart is our bold look, you look at our furniture and I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything like it, we pride ourselves on only using sustainably sourced materials from across the planet earth to give second life to trees destined for the landfills.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Nothing, it’s all in the process.

Contact Info:

• Address: 817 N 13Th AVE
  Phoenix, AZ. 85007
• Website: www.liveedgelust.com
• Phone: 928-713-9323
• Email: info@liveedgelust.com
• Instagram: Live_edge_lust
• Facebook: Live Edge Lust
• Yelp: Live Edge Lust

Image Credit:
Anthony Gonzalez – took the portrait of myself

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