Woodworking
Kylie Marie Fialho
Please share a bit about yourself and your background.
I was born in South Africa, but I grew up in Portugal — so I feel much more Portuguese than South African. Still, I think my work carries something from both places, especially in the shapes and references to nature that show up in what I make.
I started out studying gastronomy and became a chef. I worked in the culinary world for almost ten years, moving between Michelin-starred kitchens and festival setups. I was always jumping around, looking for new experiences, but I eventually realized that cooking wasn't truly my passion.
So I went back to South Africa, thinking I might live there — but I didn’t adapt well. It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people, but the lifestyle and security were very different. That’s when I decided I wanted to try farming. I bought a caravan and moved to France to work in the vineyards. I stayed there for three years.
Later, I returned to Portugal with the idea of studying woodworking. I enrolled in a private course, but it was more focused on furniture restoration, and I didn’t feel fully engaged. So I began knocking on doors and asking to learn directly from people. I worked for free to gain experience.
My family has a long connection to wood — my grandparents owned lumber shops, and some of my cousins run a carpentry business. I realized this is what I really wanted to do. Many of the tools I use today belonged to my grandparents. That’s how my journey with wood began.
At first, I was working out of my garage at home. Then a friend offered me a space in Lisbon, and after about two years, I launched Kylie Marie Studio. I’m still exploring what I want to do, whether it’s wood, metal, textiles. I’m not attached to just one material or approach. I like to experiment.
Right now, my work reflects a spirit of exploration. Some pieces lean toward the sculptural, like spoons or textured forms, while others are more functional, such as cabinets and shelves. I’m drawn to the way it interacts with materials, shifting their presence, softening or sharpening the details.
When I was living in France, I spent long stretches alone in the fields with my dog. In that quiet, I kept circling back to the same questions: What is my purpose? What truly brought me joy as a child? And I kept returning to a memory. Being in the workshop with my grandfather, holding a hammer, playing with nails. That memory sparked something deep. It felt right. It felt like home.Continuing that feeling, more than a family tradition, almost a way of being, is what anchors me now.
Tell us more about Kylie Marie Studio and how it came to be.
It all started when my friend João Maria offered me a spot in his workshop. He said, “You need to get your Instagram going, and you need a name.” The space was more than a workshop, it was a creative hub, with painters, ceramicists, and woodworkers. It felt like a little family.
One day at the lunch table, I was talking to everyone, and we started brainstorming names together. That’s how Kylie Marie Studio was born, it came from that shared moment.
It wasn’t anything grand, really, but it felt right. I was the youngest one in the group, and everyone else already had established practices. Their support and advice helped me a lot. Being surrounded by people who believed in what they were doing made a big difference.
How has your background in gastronomy influenced your approach to woodworking?
It influences how I see things, especially the way I handle materials. I still make cabinets and more standard pieces to pay the bills, but when I'm creating something personal, I approach it much like I did in the kitchen.
The care and attention you give to the ingredients in cooking is the same care I now give to wood. Everything you do with your hands needs intention. Also, I love working with color, which I think comes from all those years with colorful ingredients and plating dishes.
There’s also a connection to the kind of objects I make, a lot of them are for the table. I do spoons, plates, cutlery. I share the studio with Sebastião Lobo, who works mainly with metal cutlery. We sometimes host dinners at the workshop where we make everything for the event — the trays, the cutlery, the plates. We even cook. The last time we did one, we were 20 people around the table. It felt like a full-circle moment.
What does your creative process look like? Do you have any rituals that help you get into the flow?
I do, sometimes. My workshop is near one of the “lungs” of Lisbon, a green, forested area, so I take a morning walk there with my dog. I like to look at the shapes in the trees, the textures, and let my mind wander. When I get to the shop, I look around at what materials are left over, and often I start from scraps. I put them under the light, and something usually comes from there — maybe I need to make a gift for a friend, and that’s enough of a reason to begin.
Interestingly, my best pieces often start as gifts. When I’m making something for someone I care about, and not for money, the intention feels clearer. Later, some of those pieces turn into actual products.
In the beginning, when I had more free time and no paid jobs yet, I was making a lot just for the sake of it. Now, I’ve been busier, doing more commissioned work, and I miss that slower, freer creative space. I don’t usually plan too much. I don’t draw. I just have an idea in my head and start putting things together. Sometimes things go wrong and I think, “Okay, tomorrow’s a new day.” That’s part of it. It’s very intuitive.
Finances are starting to stabilize, but it hasn’t been easy. Lisbon is an expensive city, and I began with nothing — no name, no network, just the tools I had and a lot of determination. Being 33 adds its own kind of urgency. That’s why I still take on bespoke furniture projects to stay afloat. But I’m slowly carving out space again for personal explorations, the kind of work that feels most true to me.
What role has collaboration played in your journey?
Collaboration is essential to me. I love working with others. I collaborate a lot with Sebastian, my studio partner. Our work connects — my kitchen background and his focus on cutlery come together naturally. He’s also like a mentor to me.
I also work with interior designers, though that’s a bit more structured. What I’d love is to do more artistic collaborations. For example, we’re currently hosting a Ukrainian photographer in the studio. She’s doing a photo exhibition — and we’ll be building chairs to go with it.
Being surrounded by creative people helped me find my place. I became part of a community here, and that has been my biggest support. I truly believe that doing things together is what makes it possible. You can do it alone, maybe — but it’s just not the same. And I’m really grateful for that.
Where do you think lies the biggest potential to preserve important local crafts in the contemporary context?
I believe the biggest potential to keep crafts alive lies in preserving and passing on the traditional ways of working—especially the hands-on knowledge that only comes through experience. Machines can replicate forms, but they lack the depth, intention, and soul that comes from working with your hands. When you're building something like a solid wood cabinet, it’s not just about assembling parts. You need to know how to use tools like hand planes, chisels, scrapers, tools that require a real understanding of the material. And that kind of knowledge can’t be learned from a machine. It has to be taught by someone who’s lived it.
That’s why learning from older generations is so important. We have an older man who sometimes visits the shop, he started carpentry when he was seven and is now almost 80. He’s lost a couple of fingers, which was sadly common at the time, but the amount of knowledge he carries is incredible. I still call him when I run into challenges. He shows me things I wouldn’t find online, even though I also rely on the internet to learn.
Preserving craft isn’t just about keeping old techniques alive—it’s about using them as a foundation to move forward. When you understand the old ways, you can reimagine them in a contemporary context. You can take something simple, like a pencil, and give it a new form or meaning, while still honoring what it is.
In the end, the body holds a kind of knowledge that machines can’t replicate. There’s something essential in learning by doing, and that’s where the future of craft really begins.
What current projects excite you right now?
Right now, I’m excited about a chair I’m planning to build. It’s going to be a piece that speaks to the war between Ukraine and Russia. The chair will be empty, there won’t be a place to sit. I’ll be building it using debris, leftovers from demolished homes, fragments of loss.
I have the image in my mind. I might build it in plaster, or something similar, and then finish it without a seat, just the form. It’s more of a symbolic piece than a functional one.
This is the direction I want to move toward: making work that carries emotional weight. I still love the utilitarian pieces, but I’d like to explore more expressive paths too. I want to create with the heart, to use craft as a language.
Where and how can people engage more with your work?
People can follow my work through Instagram, I'm lucky to have someone helping me with it now, so it’s more active.
I’m also working on building a website, and people are always welcome to visit the studio in central Lisbon. I currently have some pieces available through a shop in Austria, and things are slowly expanding. I’m still at the beginning of this journey, but I hope that soon there will be even more ways to connect.
@kyliemarie.studio and www.kyliemariestudio.com
Photos by Inês Henriques.
