Our Story
The Furnace
We are a small business run by husband and wife team, Aran and Maeve Pudney. Our aim is to design and make high quality items from beautiful natural materials that you will treasure. This has turned out to be mainly hydrographic art maps made from layers of bamboo ply to date, although our original idea was to make kids furniture!
In 2015 Aran got excited about a consumer-focused laser cutter called Glowforge on Kickstarter. This sparked a whole line of thinking about laser cutting, which was not that far removed from a previous 3d printing business Aran part owned a few years previously. After a bit more investigation we sourced and purchased our green machine in 2016 and The Furnace was born. It was almost a year later before we had our ducks in a row and Aran was able to start designing and making and figuring out this fantastic bit of gear sitting in our garage, while Maeve continued to support their growing family working as a structural engineer. The Furnace has continued to grow along with our family. There are now five of us and both Aran and Maeve work for The Furnace in between juggling family life.
Aran Pudney
Aran is the designer and maker. He has always been fascinated by all things design and is passionate about using natural materials and looking after the environment. He has always loved working with wood and from an early age enjoyed making things out of timber in his father’s workshop. One of his favourite personal pieces is his beautifully crafted dining table made from salvaged matai. His background as a product designer has had a strong influence on how he has developed the range of high quality art works for The Furnace. His attention to detail shines through from the robust framing system he has designed to the elegant presentation box and the clever postage packaging. He also has a slight coffee obsession - and quite likes a sip or three of one of the local craft beers...
Maeve Pudney
Maeve looks after the business side of things. This includes the website, book keeping, invoicing, social media, scheduling and even doing a bit of staining! Working with your partner is not for everyone however we seem to have complimentary skills and it works well for us. Maeve has her own creative side and loves problem solving, so we often spark ideas off each other, resulting in a very dynamic and creative atmosphere. We do get to take random coffee breaks on the beach in sunny weather too! Of course when everyone is sick it does mean that sometimes The Furnace comes to a standstill - people are usually fairly understanding though.
Our Family
We have three children, Aoife who is in school now, Hugo who goes to kindy three days a week and Eoin who is our wee baby! Having our own business means we have the flexibility to work around the needs of our young family. Both Aran and I get to share the laughs as well as the tears and when the sun shines we can always turn the laser off and get outside. We love getting out and about and our favourite family activity at the moment is mucking about on Lyall Bay beach, though we are looking forward to going further afield when Eoin gets a little bit bigger.
