Meet Dale Rieke

&

Jenny Acheson

Dale's Story

Dale is a self-taught woodworker, first inspired by working on wooden sailboats in San Diego at a very young age. After working in a Sarasota cabinet shop he started Dale Rieke Inc. A self-employed, commissioned artist his entire career, he has passionately worked directly with designers and clients to help them achieve their design dreams, supplying hand or CAD scaled drawings, fine fabrication and expert finishing and installing – thus engaging with jobs from start to finish. Dale has been designing and building furniture for 30 years, eventually rebranding from Dale Rieke, Inc. into the current Wood Street Studio, located in downtown Sarasota, Florida, USA.

A Collaboration

Wood Street Studio is now a collaboration of partners Dale Rieke and Jenny Acheson. Jenny worked as an editorial, lifestyle, and travel photographer for 25 years in London, Paris, and New York. After meeting Dale, she moved to Sarasota and together they bought the warehouse that is Wood Street Studio. Her clients are New York and London magazines and newspapers and now include the local Sarasota Magazine and Edible Sarasota.

And then .... Urban Lumber

The expansive portfolio of wood species in Florida inspired Dale to purchase a mill and start an urban lumber company in 2016. Taking advantage of the local resources added a new dimension to the business, and allowed him to maximize, as well as fine-tune his creative skills.

The 7000 sq. ft warehouse space in which Wood Street Studio operates produces urban slabs as well as custom furniture. An acre of land 5 blocks away houses the mill and countless piles of logs!

Wood Street Studio

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View Jenny’s Photography:

www.JennyAcheson.com

"Good design enriches our lives."

Throughout Dale’s lengthy tenure of designing and building custom pieces, he’s produced pieces inspired by countless different time periods. However, the Wood Street Studio sensibility is overarchingly inspired by the simplicity of Shaker (the first minimalists), Danish, and mid-century modern designers.

"'Bespoke' means designed specially, just for you."

Dale has spent over three decades perfecting his craft and his distinct way of visualizing a piece’s potential. Wood Street Studio would now like to consider itself the premier bespoke furniture-making business in Sarasota.

Sustainability Is About Respecting the Wood and the Planet

To Dale and Jenny, sustainability and green practices are just as important as design. All of the furniture is constructed of wood that is locally sourced or from sustainable sources. Trees that come to the end of their natural lives, trees that are removed during excavation, or trees that are damaged from pests but whose interior wood is otherwise intact, can find new life as solid wood furniture. Dale finds joy in honoring the raw material and physically transforming it into something functional, giving the wood a second life.

"We often think of trees as environmentally friendly, but we don’t usually think about what happens when a tree dies and decomposes. Unfortunately, some of the CO2 that the tree absorbed over the course of its life is released back into the atmosphere. We circumvent this phenomenon, however, when we turn the tree into heirloom-quality furniture that will be used for generations to come."

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