The atelier

A workshop, not a factory.

Seven people. Three benches. One door that opens onto Jalan Industri Bukit Permata at half past seven, six days a week.

Close-up of a craftsman planing walnut with a brass hand plane

Origin

Started in a garage in Subang.

Firestaq began as a side bench in 2012 — one cabinetmaker, a borrowed jointer, and a clientele built almost entirely on referral. The workshop moved to its current Kota Kemuning address in 2018, and has stayed deliberately small since. We turn down work that does not fit the bench.

What did not change: every piece is drawn, jointed, finished and inspected by a person whose name we know. Nothing is subcontracted. The brass plate on the back of each piece carries the maker's initials beside the client's.

Method

How a commission moves through the bench.

01 · Brief

Listen first.

A site visit, a measure, a sketch. We ask about light, traffic, who sits where.

02 · Drawing

Three views.

Plan, elevation, section. Approved drawings, material samples, fixed quotation.

03 · Bench

Hand and machine.

Rough milling on machinery; jointery, finishing and detail by hand.

04 · Hand over

In the room.

Delivered, sited and inspected together with you. Care notes left behind.

Materials

What sits in the rack.

Hardwood. Kiln-dried American black walnut, white oak from the Appalachians, Burmese teak reclaimed from old shophouse beams. Every plank is tagged with its origin and moisture reading.

Brass. Sourced from a third-generation foundry in Penang. We patinate in-house.

Linen and velvet. Mostly Italian and Belgian mills — we keep a swatch library in the studio that you are welcome to thumb through.

Leather. Vegetable tanned, mostly from a tannery in Tuscany we have used since 2016.

The bench

People who make Firestaq.

Hafiz Rahman

Atelier lead · cabinetmaker since 2003. Trained in Cologne, came home in 2011.

Maya Ling

Drawing & design. Architectural background; runs every commission from sketch to drawing.

Iskandar bin Yusof

Upholstery. Trained under his father at the family workshop in Klang for fifteen years.