New Around Here?
A Little About Us
Welcome. We’re Mortise & Tenon Magazine, and we’re passionate about hand-tool woodworking. We are an independent, family-run publishing company (read: 3 families) based in rural coastal Maine. We publish our 144-page ad-free magazine twice per year (with back issues in stock). We also publish our own books about handcraft and its connection to a living a full life as well as sell a few of our favorite titles from others. We produce our own instructional videos and run an 8-week online educational platform called The Mortise & Tenon Apprenticeship Program. And we make T-shirts and stickers for fun.
We do not use social media because we have better things to do. Instead, we make things in our woodshop and share it on the “M&T Daily Dispatch.” We also publish blog posts multiple times per week and podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and “insider” emails every few weeks.
Our Vision
“Mortise & Tenon exists to cultivate reverence for the dignity of humanity and the natural world through the celebration of handcraft.”
We glean insight from examining pre-industrial furniture of all kinds and interacting with craftspeople and researchers from around the world in order to understand the value of pre-industrial craft practice for 21st-century life. (We even started a Craft Research Grant Program to further this mission!) We are not purists, snobs, or Luddites. We are everyday people who are passionate about learning to use our hands in an age that emphasizes technological solutions over personal engagement.
We believe 21st-century people would do well to live a life of engagement with the world and that handcraft is a great way to do that.
Where to Start?
If you’re looking to get a flavor of the M&T ethos, we recommend picking up a back issue of the magazine.
If you’re looking to learn how to use hand tools, check out the Apprenticeship videos, Joshua’s books Joined: A Bench Guide to Furniture Joinery or Worked: A Bench Guide to Hand-Tool Efficiency, and the 8-Week Apprenticeship Program.
If you want to dive deep in craft philosophy, check out the books we offer.
The best way to stay in touch with what we’re up to is to subscribe to our mailing list at the bottom of this page.
Drop us a line.
For real. There are humans behind those emails.
You can email us at info@mortiseandtenonmag.com.
Truly, it’s just us, sitting in our little shop in Sedgwick, Maine, making shavings and interacting with reader correspondence. We aren’t Amazon with infinite resources, but we do care. Deeply. We have zero ties to any funders or mega-corporations. Being independent gives us an intimate (and unmediated) connection with our readers. We have regulars. We have folders for our regulars. (Here’s looking at you, Hugo.)
We love our customers and are so grateful for their support of this crazy rollercoaster that is Mortise & Tenon.
We hope you can find some inspiration in the work we’re doing. Craftsmanship is a bottomless pursuit.
Warmest regards,
Joshua, Mike, and Grace