When you are a custom woodworker, rarely are two days ever the same. Days can be unique, often challenging, sometimes joyful, sometimes frustrating, but never boring. That is a truism for most custom manufacturers, and it couldn’t be any truer for Dan Sullivan, owner of Chicago-based Navillus Woodworks.

Navillus Woodworks was founded in Chicago by Sullivan in 2005. He was born and raised in Maine and moved to Chicago in 1997. After years working in both the trades and the arts, Sullivan began working as a general contractor before focusing on custom fabrication.

Operating out of the home of the Dock 6 Collective, a 25,000 square foot building used by Navillus and other designers and manufacturers, the design-build company specializes in fine custom furniture, millwork, museum installations, retail and hospitality ... the list is long.

Tailored solutions
Known for blending traditional craftsmanship with modern CNC technology, their work is heavily influenced by fine art and contemporary architectural design. For residential and commercial clients, Navillus offers completely tailored solutions. They incorporate unique features like custom wood inlays, hidden storage, and built-in lighting to create functional furniture, and use just about any material the client desires.

Their work has been shown on award-winning TV shows, and high-profile projects. Navillus Woodworks has done custom commission-based work for museums, institutions, art galleries as well as architects, designers, and homeowners. With his wife, conceptual artist Edra Soto, he has collaborated on sculptural pieces that have been exhibited widely in venues including the MCA Chicago, Perez Art Museum Miami, and Hunter East Harlem Gallery.

A national audience got a chance to see Navillus’ work as it was prominently displayed in the hit TV show, The Bear. The FX series followed a fine-dining chef who returns to Chicago to run his family’s debt-ridden sandwich shop and turns it into a culinary destination.

Sullivan’s custom Franklin dining chairs, tables, and stools first appeared in 2023, during Season 2 of The Bear and became a major visual feature at the renovated TV restaurant.

In a blog by Sullivan, he said that when the production team approached him about creating the seating, it had to do double duty: look authentic on camera while standing up to the rigors of television production. The Franklin Chair, with its bifurcated leg design and all-wood construction, was the perfect solution, he said.

Another of Navillus’ high-profile jobs was the Scala project. The monumental sculpture installed at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Computer Design and Science Building was designed by Sullivan and his wife, the artist Edra Soto, and fabricated by the Navillus team at Dock 6. The 40 foot by 40 foot suspended sculpture consists of 17,000-pounds of poplar wood, crafted into 485 octagonal modules meticulously carved from more than a mile of 3-inch thick wood.

Collaborative efforts
Navillus often works with other designers and manufacturers including members of the Dock 6 collective. 

The group, of which Navillus is a founding member and active collaborator, operates as a shared makerspace and cooperative business. The members act as mutual resource and share equipment and a library of tools.

Collaboration is a key to Navillus success, as it works with other manufacturers and specialists. Often serving as a contractor/integrator, they work with both the inhouse Dock 6 designers and fabricator, they also work with specialty vendors who bring their own talents and capabilities such as custom laser cutting metal parts or other components. Then, Navillus will do project assembly, finishing and final delivery to the client.

“That process could be analogous to any number of projects,” he said. “It could be a piece of furniture like a table, or it could be obviously somebody’s millwork in their home, or in a restaurant or bar.”

The process often begins with designers and customers reaching out to Navillus and giving Sullivan a general idea of what they’re looking for. “We then collaborate with them as closely as possible to give them exactly what they want and to accommodate their needs.” 

The Navillus team also brings their own ideas and aesthetic decisions on the project and how to manufacture the products, Sullivan said.

In the case of bar carts, which will be rolled up to a dining table. “It’s like a meze cart, but they also want one for making drinks on it, so we modified the same design and then we design the process of how we’re going to build the job.”

“For the cart, we wanted to make sure that the top of this cart is something that could be cleanable and would wear very well as it’s going to be in a restaurant so you know it’s going to get beat up,” Sullivan added “and also something that we can produce in -house as much as possible. So, then the natural choice could be Corian or some sort of solid surface like that, that we can carve on our CNC router, right?”

Investing in technology
The company recently invested in a new FLEX Table CNC router from Machine Tool Clam, an upgrade from the refurbished Anderson Stratus router. The 3-axis MTC machine has a “nine-tool tool changer, a 5-by-10-foot bed, excellent rapid speeds and a really nice Z-axis clearance,” Sullivan said.

Software translates digital designs directly into physical cuts, and the router can be easily programmed for carving complex reliefs, and detailed contours. Beyond just softwoods and hardwoods, it can shape plywood, MDF, plastics, and various composites.

“We find this to be an essential part of almost every project,” he said. “We’re cutting cabinet parts, which is obviously the most typical kind of process that we would use the router for. But it’s also an excellent carving machine. We’ve gotten really good at not just cutting plywood and MDF, but also all types of solid wood, and other materials like Corian solid surface material.”