Like the rings of a tree, our experiences shape who we become. Every choice changes our path. Every encounter leaves a mark. Some people step into the light, while others remain unseen. Along the way we discover that true growth is not measured by what we achieve, but by what we pass on to others.
My work is not a collection of separate artworks. It is one continuous story about what it means to be human.
From Tree Rings, to The Night Watch and Show Yourself, to United Wood Floor Layers – Pay It Forward, Between Doors, and Gemikigai—each project is a new chapter in the same journey.
I don’t create art to provide answers. I create art to ask questions.
Questions about identity. About visibility. About courage. About connection. About legacy. About purpose.
Wood is my medium. The human journey is my subject.
Why
Every art floor has a reason why it exists.
I don't make floors to fill a space. Each work starts from an idea. Something about the place, the people who'll stand on it, the story a building wants to tell. It means something, and it keeps meaning long after it's laid. It's why no two are alike, and why a space that holds one is never quite the same again. It gives a space a soul.
The Work · each one, one of one
NWFA Convention, Orlando 2026, with part of the sponsors who made it possible to bring The Night Watch in Wood to the United States.
The Night Watch in Wood
195,000 pixels · 52 wood species · 4 years
Created by Jakko Woudenberg, The Night Watch in Wood is a monumental contemporary interpretation of Rembrandt's iconic masterpiece. Every pixel individually selected and placed by hand, cut diagonally from face grain wood to reveal the grain at its most expressive.
Measuring 535 × 425 × 18 cm, the artwork occupies more than 20 square metres. Its modular construction allows both horizontal and vertical exhibition. Presented horizontally, it becomes a stage — an artwork that can be performed on, spoken from, and stood upon.
Unlike the original in the Rijksmuseum, which was cut down on all four sides in 1715 to fit its new location in Amsterdam's Town Hall, The Night Watch in Wood shows the complete composition as Rembrandt intended it.
More than a tribute, it tells two stories at once — Rembrandt's masterpiece and Jakko's perspective on it. About connection, craftsmanship, creativity, adventure, and the universal human desire to be seen. From a distance, you recognise the masterpiece. Up close, you discover the craftsmanship behind it.
Exhibited at Station Amstel, Amsterdam · WorldSkills the Finals, NL · NWFA Convention, Orlando, USA
Old Icelandic for intuition · Krinkels HQ, Breda · with Paul de Ruiter Architecten
Old Icelandic for intuition.
Created for the headquarters of Krinkels in collaboration with Paul de Ruiter Architects, INSSAEI transforms the story of a company into something you can walk across.
Each growth ring represents a year in Krinkels' existence. Together, they form a living timeline of ambition, setbacks, achievements and renewal.
Because growth is never a straight line. It expands, season after season, shaped by challenges, decisions and the people who leave their mark along the way.
Named after the Old Icelandic word for intuition, INSSAEI is a reminder that the most meaningful creations do not emerge from calculations alone. They begin with the courage to trust what cannot yet be explained.
Growth made visible. Ring by ring. Year by year.
Vakwerk Awards, category & overall winner, NL 2020 · WFB Design Awards, Best Stair & Best Commercial Floor, USA 2020 · CFJ Awards, Best International, UK 2021
“I don't move from A to B. I begin with an image or a question that catches my interest. I find the meaning while making.”
Artist Statement
I don’t make floors. I make monuments in wood — each built for a single place, and never made again. Every piece is cut and placed by hand, over months and sometimes years. It is not made to decorate a room, but to outlast it.
Artist Bio
Jakko Woudenberg is a Dutch master parquet craftsman and monumental artist, based in Schagen, the Netherlands, and a member of the Dutch Guild of Parquet Layers.
For decades he practised parquet as a trade. Since 2019 he has been on a mission to pull it into the art world — not because it sounds good, but because he believes an art form lies hidden inside the craft. INSSAEI and The Night Watch in Wood are his proof: the latter a monumental reconstruction of Rembrandt’s masterpiece built from 195,000 hand-cut wooden pixels across 52 species of wood, including the sections cut away from the original in 1715.
His work has been exhibited internationally, from Amsterdam to Orlando, and recognised with the Vakwerk Award, the WFB Design Award and the CFJ Award. He works only on commission, each piece conceived for a specific site and purpose.
He believes craft dies when it is kept to yourself. Through United Wood Floor Layers — Pay It Forward, he shares his knowledge freely: with the next generation, with colleagues, with anyone willing to learn.
For Architects, Interior Designers & Commissioners
You can buy any expensive floor in the world. You cannot buy one that is only yours.
Everything expensive is for sale. What I make is not. It does not exist until I make it for you. Once it exists, it belongs to one place on earth, forever. This is not a product. It is a decision.
A design floor
Made to fit a space and make it beautiful. It serves the room and it can be repeated endlessly, in a thousand buildings at once, because it carries no story of its own.
Decoration · repeatable
An art floor
Begins with a why. It tells a story and moves something in the person standing on it. And because that story belongs to one place and one moment, it can never be repeated, never reproduced.
Meaning · one of one
A design floor can be repeated. This cannot. That is the difference between decoration and art.
Your story, in the ground you stand on
A building comes alive through its floor. I make that floor tell your story — woven into the wood itself, the way INSSAEI carries one ring for every year a company has existed. It keeps telling that story, every day, long after I am gone.
A place no one forgets
A space that holds a Dutch Wood Artist floor is no longer one of many. It becomes the reason people visit, photograph, and remember. Not a purchase. A landmark.
The vision, not just the craft
Skilled hands exist. I work alongside them. What is rare is the rest: imagining what has never been made, the nerve to begin without knowing the way, and building a story through the process itself. That is where my work begins, and it cannot be copied.
Yours alone, forever
Every work is born from a single, unrepeatable moment. Conceived for your space, shaped to its lines, and made once. It will never be repeated, never reproduced, never found anywhere else on earth.
A category of one
I work in a field of one.
I don't fit the categories, and I stopped trying to. Not a floor layer, not a designer, not quite a gallery artist. What I make sits somewhere of its own. Monumental, walkable artworks in solid wood, each one starting from a why instead of a pattern. There's nothing to compare it to, and that's the point. The work stands on its own.
It also means you do not need to know how this works before you begin. You bring a place, a question, or simply the feeling that something here should be unrepeatable. The rest is mine to carry.
We begin with a why
You tell me about the place. What it is, what it should hold, what you want people to feel the moment they walk in. No brief required. Just honesty about what matters.
I find the form
I translate that into a vision. Shaped to your space, your light, your story. You see exactly where it is going before a single piece of wood is cut. No surprises.
It is made, once
Built by hand, from solid wood. Most commissions take between three and twelve months. When it is finished, it is yours alone, permanently.
Trusted by architects including Paul de Ruiter. Built for headquarters, museums and private spaces that understand the difference between a floor and a statement.
The Movement
United Wood Floor Layers
A worldwide movement Jakko founded to connect craftspeople across borders. Every participant creates a panel and commits to helping three others. No ego, no money. Just skill, passed forward. Because the best things in craft were never built alone.
Concept · in development
Gemikigai® by Dutch Wood Artist
Ikigai is the Japanese philosophy of finding your reason for being. Feng shui is the ancient Chinese art of creating harmony between people and their space. Gemikigai brings both into the floor beneath your feet.
Project in development
“We spend so much time trying to choose the right door, that we forget to pay attention to who we become while standing between them.”
Get in touch
Let’s talk about your space.
Every commission begins with a conversation about what a space should hold, and what it should make people feel.
I’m working on a book about The Night Watch in Wood and my own journey from craftsman to artist.
The idea is a book you can enter from two sides. On one side, the story behind the work. Turn the book over, and the making takes centre stage.
The human journey and the practical process belong together. I want to share how ideas take shape, how making changes the maker, and what it means to keep going when you don’t yet know where a project will lead.
The book is still in development. More will follow as it takes shape.
