Our story

Pastos & Co started in Brighton in 2020.

Johnny Pastos grew up around furniture making but didn’t plan to go into it. He studied music, worked as a musician, and ran a small catering business supplying pastries to coffee shops around Brighton. When Covid hit, both stopped overnight.

With nothing to pivot back to, he started learning woodworking from scratch. It began as a way to stay busy and pay the bills, and quickly turned into a full-time thing. An Etsy shop went live under the name JPDoesStuff, making desks for people suddenly working from home. Orders picked up fast and spread into studio furniture, shelving, tables and fully custom builds.

As demand grew, friends got involved. Most were musicians whose work had disappeared too. None of them were trained furniture makers at the start. They learned by doing, made mistakes, fixed them, and kept going. By summer 2021 it was clear this wasn’t a side project anymore, and Pastos & Co was formed.

Today we’re a small team making solid wood furniture to order. Homes, studios, restaurants, offices. Desks, tables, storage, shelving. Our customers ask, we design and make it. No batch production, no stock sitting around. Everything is built for a specific space and a specific use.

Quality matters to us, but so do the people behind the work. We pay fairly, keep our supply chain local, and use sustainably sourced, locally produced timber. We care about the team, the materials, and the way things are made.

Pastos Co exists because we care about making good furniture without cutting corners, and about building a business that treats people well.

You can read customer reviews on our Etsy store if you want the unfiltered version.