QuixCraft

I was born and raised in Kansas, and I've been building things out of wood since 1998 — long before I thought of it as a shop. Over the years that turned into thousands of pieces, many of them made as tournament prizes for the L5R card game community. L5R draws heavily on Japanese and broader Asian mythology, and that connection runs through a lot of what I make — including the gaming boxes and dice boxes in this shop, built to be more than a token of winning: a functional piece of art the winner can use every day and be proud of.


I have a BS in Computer Engineering from Kansas State, and that background shows up in the joinery: the octagonal stavework on the tankards, the corner splines on the keepsake boxes. I like a build to be as precise as it is good-looking.


I also train and teach Aikido (Nidan, US Aikido Federation) at my own dojo, Little Apple Aikido, and hold a shodan in Seishinkan iaido. That's grown into a long-running interest in Japanese craft and design, which is where the masu cups come from — a traditional Japanese sake-measuring cup, reimagined here in exotic hardwoods instead of the usual cypress.


The same crowd that shows up for L5R tends to show up at Ren Faires and SCA events too, and more than a few of my tankards have gone out as prizes and gifts for exactly that world — built for the table, not the display shelf.


Everything here is meant to be functional wood art that you can use every day. I'd rather make something that gets picked up and used than something that just sits and gathers dust.


— Don Eisele, Manhattan, Kansas