The workshop in the south of Spain, where Guillermo Rodriguez builds his exquisite boxes is in a small hexagonal cabin built by his sister and inspired by Mongolian yurts. Space is tight. “Not having a larger workspace has influenced my focus on smaller pieces,” he says.

But he also admits, “Since my beginnings, I have had a weakness for boxes, and boxes within boxes.” His beginnings as a boxmaker and full-time woodworker, however, go back only four or five years. Before that, he spent six years living in a van he had outfitted as a camper, traveling around the country pursuing the sport of rock climbing. “Spain is a paradise for this,” he says.

And for some years prior to that he worked as a professional photographer. He shot stills on film sets, architectural photos, press shots for a newspaper, street photos. Wood was central to his experience as a student at a Waldorf school. “Our tables, chairs, toys, and almost everything around us was made of wood. I made my first wooden spoon in our woodcarving class at 11 years old.” And he watched and helped his father, a stone sculptor who also worked wood.

His father died in an accident when Guillermo was an adolescent. “My life changed completely,” he said. “And I did not hear about wood again until many years later.” During Covid, Rodriguez settled down after his rock-climbing “pirate days” and carved some wooden spoons. “My desire to make things out of wood reawakened,” he says.

He began watching woodworking videos, and soon the craft became what he calls “an obsession of every hour of my life.” His teachers, online and in-person, have been Hernán Costa, Germán Peraire, Israel Martín, Sebastián Mateu, and Vasko Sotirov. “They have been fundamental in everything I have done,” he says.

Inspired work

The sycamore and ebony boxes reflect Rodriguez’s affection for Japanese design and craftsmanship.

The hinged, six-drawer box is a “humble homage” to Kenji Suda, whose work Rodriguez cites as “fundamental in my search for inspiration.”

And the cabinet was inspired by the Bauhaus painter Josef Albers.

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