myduckling New Zealand

Tested like a toy, built like furniture

Safe by design

That corner was rounded and sanded by hand, because a footrest sits at exactly forehead height for a smaller sibling. Then there's the part you can't photograph. In New Zealand, toys for children under three must meet a mandatory safety standard. Children's furniture doesn't have to meet anything of the kind. We test ours to the toy standard anyway — including the EN 71-3 migration test, which screens for 19 elements a child could chew or scratch loose.

A ladder of small decisions

Set it again next year

That column of holes is the part parents notice last and use longest. Raise the seat a notch, bring the footrest up with it, and their feet land on something solid again — which is the difference between fidgeting and finishing. Most of our range moves this way. The toddler dining chair alone has eight seat heights and five footrest positions.

Where every piece starts

The materials we build with

Everything we make starts as a plank on a bench, and ends with someone's hand taking the sharpness off a corner — because that corner is going to meet a forehead one day. We work in four woods and choose between them the way a carpenter would: by what the piece has to survive. Not by what's cheapest to press into a shape.

The one that stays put

Solid, and you can see it

Look at the edge: narrow boards, planed true and glued side by side, then sanded until the joins go quiet. That's solid rubberwood — a real hardwood, straight-grained, blond now and honey after a few years of sunlight. It has weight without being heavy. Our solid-wood learning tower lands at 13.5 kg: enough that a toddler hauling themselves up the side doesn't shift it a millimetre, light enough that you can still slide it back against the bench with one hand.

The one that takes the load

Where the forces go

Stand a piece of beech on its end and you can read it — rings packed tight, fine rays running across the face. That density is why beech grips a screw and holds a joint under real, repeated load. It is the wood we choose for the piece that has to stay solid all night: the bed rail — solid beech, every edge rounded by hand, taking a sleeping child’s whole weight against it at two in the morning.

The lightest one

Warm, pale, easy to live with

Pine is the one that still smells like a workshop the moment it's cut. It comes up pale and honey-warm, with long straight grain you can follow the length of a board — the wood that makes a room feel lighter rather than heavier. It's light to handle, too, which is why it's the timber under our bookshelf: easy to carry in and stand where you want it, then anchored to the wall to hold a whole library, covers-out, at your child's own height.

Nothing hidden inside

What lets a shape get clever

Plywood is what makes a folding shape possible. Thin sheets of real wood, each laid at right angles to the one below, hold a panel true even after it is cut into the moving parts of a folding or height-adjustable tower — which is why those parts still fold flat and lock square two years later. It is also the surface that takes colour evenly, so the pieces we finish in white or black are plywood. Look at the edge and count the layers: solid timber, the whole way down. No MDF, no particleboard.

The piece you don't replace

Slow wood, slow furniture

A seedling this size won't be furniture for another forty years. That's the real timescale of what we work with, and the reason we build the way we do: wood chosen to outlast a childhood, settings that keep up with a growing child instead of being outgrown, shapes plain enough to hand to the next one. The greenest thing in the house is the piece nobody has to buy twice.