Zdenko Tudor in the workshop at Flytårnet

Zdenko Tudor

I design and build lamps.

I’ve always lived in small places, and looked for the light that makes a room snug. Unfiltered light is blinding. So electric light has always been filtered, mostly through milk-white glass or plastic, which spreads a white light across the room. I chose wood. The light turns amber, and the shadows stay.

My workshop at Fornebu is also open for courses.

Courses →

Croatia

I was born in Split, a few years before the breakup of Yugoslavia, and spent my first years with my grandparents.

My grandfather was actually a tailor, but he was always building something on the side: a grill from a car rim and a washing-machine drum, a windmill for his own electricity. When he lay under a car, I crawled under beside him.

The windmill my grandfather built, in front of the house in Split
Me as a boy under my grandfather's car

Norway

At twelve I came to Norway, without my grandfather and without a workshop. I didn’t speak the language, was bullied, and withdrew behind the computer screen.

I started electronics at NTNU because I wanted to build things. The first was to be a motor with a clock that opened the curtain in the morning. It was never built: back then, just getting the circuit to know what time it was was a project in itself.

The further I got, the more it became reports, analyses and calculations. I took a master’s in engineering cybernetics. My thesis was about slowing a satellite’s spin as it’s released into orbit, using magnetic coils. In the last six months I built the circuit and tested it. It was the first time in five years that I had built something I had designed myself. I got an A.

Zdenko as a boy, with a sports bag on a street in winter
Zdenko as a child, in the snow by a snowman

The office

Still, I followed the path I thought a good boy should take: a secure job at a large company. I became a consultant at Accenture, on NAV’s pension project. The project was so large that everything moved slowly. On my first day I thought: Is this the rest of my life?

After two years I took a sabbatical and travelled, among other places, in India. When I came back, everything was the same, except me. I had experienced so much that I thought I should tell everyone else how to live. It didn’t work. I had to do it myself, and resigned.

I tried teaching. When the money ran out, I was back in front of a computer screen, as a frontend developer. Then came the layoffs.

Zdenko in a suit and shirt, from the office years
Zdenko at his desk in the office

This time I didn't go back.

  1. Grønland, Oslo

    I bought hand tools: first a used pre-war plane and a set of chisels. I clamped the workpiece to the dining table with four clamps and planed in the living room.

    Then I built a vice onto my desk. A car mechanic welded the nuts onto the threaded rods for me. That’s where I practised sawing dovetails.

    Planing at the dining table in the living room at Grønland
    A vice fixed to a desk in the living room at Grønland

  2. Ekeberg, Oslo

    My first workshop. The ad promised a workshop; it was an annex full of rubbish. I cleared out a tonne and built my first workbench. It was finished on my 30th birthday. Three months later the house was sold, and I had to move out.

    Zdenko shaping a curved piece in the workshop at Ekeberg
    The first workbench, finished, in the workshop at Ekeberg

  3. Porsgrunn

    I moved there for a partner, and for a workshop. I made stools, spatulas, travel chairs that come apart and guitar hangers, one simple project after another.

    Zdenko drilling with a brace in the workshop in Porsgrunn
    The wood stove burning in the workshop in Porsgrunn, Zdenko at the workbench behind it

  4. Tessungdalen, Å camp

    I had no money. At the camp I got food and lodging in return for helping out, and later I paid a small rent. I lived alone in a 14-square-metre log cabin and worked in the landowner's garage.

    The 14 m² log cabin in Tessungdalen
    Sawing with a Japanese pull saw in the garage

  5. Tessungdalen, the van

    In winter the garage was below freezing. I insulated and panelled a VW Crafter with standing height, put in lights and a heater, and moved the workbench in.

    Zdenko at the workbench inside the van
    Zdenko sitting in the doorway of the van, with saws and a guitar behind him

  6. Tessungdalen, abandoned workshop

    Proper machines, for the first time. I had learned from woodworkers on YouTube who worked by hand. What I hadn't noticed was that the timber had often been machine-planed before they started filming. I've used both since.

    Zdenko drilling into a board at the workbench in the workshop in Tessungdalen
    Zdenko chiselling at the workbench in the workshop in Tessungdalen

  7. Fornebu

    After the time alone in the valley, I wanted to be back among people. I put up notes in Oslo, Ås, Drøbak and Holmestrand saying I was looking for a workshop, and someone got in touch. The workshop is 170 square metres in Flytårnet, the old control tower at Oslo Airport Fornebu. This is where Glød came about, and where I teach classes.

    Sanding in the workshop at Flytårnet

The lamps

One of the owners of the wooden-spoon factory in Tessungdalen said that almost no one makes wooden lamps, and that I should try. The idea took root. In a lamp I could challenge myself across disciplines, not just with the woodwork. And it could give me the light of the cabin: warm and low, like a fireplace.

For the prototype of Glød Søyle I also made the electronics. I want a lamp to have the light, the form and the function I'm after — all three, not two of them. For Glød Søyle that meant a dimmer in the lamp itself, and there was no ready-made solution for it.

Hand on the slider dimmer in Glød Søyle
Hand-soldered circuit board for the first prototype
My room in the evening, lit only by the lamps

The name

Way of Wood is named after the Way — Dao. Like dō in judo and kendo, it is not a skill but a practice that shapes the one who practises it.