I’ve always been drawn to making things.
As a kid, that meant scale models. As a teenager, it turned into painting Warhammer—mostly Wood Elves, back when I had more time than patience. Then life did what it does. Studies, work, responsibilities… and the hobby quietly disappeared for about 25 years.
A while ago, I picked it up again. Not out of nostalgia, but because I missed something I couldn’t quite name at first. The focus. The calm. The satisfaction of working with your hands and ending up with something tangible at the end of it.
Woodworking has always been somewhere in the background too. I grew up around it—my father spent a lot of time in his workshop—and I think that stuck with me more than I realized. There’s something similar in both crafts: attention to detail, patience, and the quiet rhythm you fall into when you’re fully absorbed in what you’re doing.
That “flow” is hard to come by in day-to-day work. Professionally, I manage operational teams in finance. It’s structured, fast-paced, and mostly intangible. At the end of the day, there’s rarely something you can physically point to and say: I made this.
This is the opposite of that.
On Display started as a way to combine both worlds—miniatures and woodworking—into something concrete. A way to build pieces that don’t just store models, but actually do them justice. Because if you’ve spent hours (or hundreds of hours) painting something, it deserves more than a shelf.
It’s also a bit of a personal challenge. A way to break out of the default loop of sleep, commute, desk, eat, repeat. To create something on the side that reflects what I value: craftsmanship, simplicity, and objects that are made to last.
What you see here is the result of that process. Still evolving, still improving—but always built with the same idea in mind: if it’s worth making, it’s worth displaying.
That kid building scale models on the kitchen table probably wouldn't have predicted this. But he'd have approved.
Welcome to On Display — and honoured to be part of your journey.
Gilles
