Like many friends who meet in their youth, Joseph Ferriso and Jonathan Anzalone talked about working together one day. Unlike most such dreams, this one came true.

Sharing a middle-school passion for painting, wood shop, surfing, and skateboarding, the Long Island natives focused on art in high school and stayed in touch when Ferriso went on to Cooper Union and Anzalone left for Rhode Island School of Design, both graduating in 2003. Anzalone migrated west in 2007, first to the tiny Bay Area hamlet of Port Costa, then to San Francisco a couple years later, the same year Ferriso moved to the city. Anzalone “had a commission to make a table and asked if I wanted to help,” recalls Ferriso. “We ended up having a lot of fun – especially afterward, when we got to play with the leftover wood.” The partnership was solidified as Anzfer Farms, combining a mash-up of their names with a reference to the makeshift barn in which they were working at the time. 

It was while they were experimenting that they honed the concept of their Lock & Key seating and tables, which assemble with interlocking pieces of wood and derive stability from gravity rather than extraneous hardware. “It’s our response to the Ikea concept of disposable furniture,” Anzalone says, “stuff you use for a while – and then you move, and lose the instructions and half the screws, and it becomes wobbly, and you toss it.” Made in an array of reclaimed and sustainable woods, the chairs and dining tables combine the heft, integrity, and individuality of heirloom furniture with the portability of more mass-market pieces. 

The precise, rectilinear Lock & Key silhouettes contrast with Anzfer Farms’ signature organic shapes, such as floor and table lamps made from found branches and driftwood, and chunky stumps and remnants fashioned into stools and low tables that are supported by dowel-like legs. “Working with driftwood and leftover offcuts allows us to dream,” says Ferriso. “Searching for wood on the beach is like a treasure hunt – you have no idea what you’ll find or what you’ll do with it, so you just step back and let the wood speak to you.” They also source material from as an invitation: “Voids, insect holes, irregularities, rot – all these so-called problems create opportunities. For us, they are places of interest – to be amplified rather than concealed,” Anzalone says. 

Commissions spring from individual clients, interior designers, museums, and companies such as Etsy, which approached Anzfer Farms about building out its San Francisco offices. The Berkeley Art Museum acquired a grouping of 18 side tables, stools, benches, and coffee tables, as well as a 13-foot table for a recent show called “The Possible.” And a collaboration with artist Sarah Rara at the Hammer biennial in Los Angeles (creating hexagonal stools that represent the color spectrum seen by bees) led to the Gradation side table. “We had cups of leftover paint we wanted to use up before they dried,” explains Ferriso, of the resulting experiments with color and form. 

No two Anzfer Farm pieces are exactly alike. “There’s a world of wood available out there – just not all of it all the time. Which keeps it interesting,” Anzalone says. “We don’t want to make hundreds of the same thing. We’re more like a restaurant with a changing menu, featuring the best of what’s available. When it’s gone, it’s gone – and then we move on to something else.” 

Deborah Bishop is a writer and editor in San Francisco.