NOVA KINETICA

We make
wood move.

Kinetic coasters, handcrafted in Nova Scotia — laser-cut hardwood gears sealed under acrylic, made to be touched, turned, and set in motion. Clocks are on the bench; this is where they start.

Shop the coasters From the workshop

Every coaster links to every other — set two side by side and the motion travels.

Nova Kinetica in MotionThe kinetic clipboard
  1. 01

    Cut, not printed

    Every gear is laser-cut from hardwood and birch — real teeth, real tolerances.

  2. 02

    Sealed under acrylic

    A clear top protects the mechanism and your table, and lets the motion show.

  3. 03

    Built to connect

    Integrated magnets and precision edges pass the spin from piece to piece.

  4. 04

    Made here

    Designed, cut, and assembled by hand in our Nova Scotia workshop.

The Kinetic Coasters

Seventeen designs, one price — $25 each. Each is a small mechanical artwork that happens to hold a drink: twist one and the pattern turns beneath the acrylic. Link two or more edge to edge and the motion travels across the table. These nine are the heart of the collection:

The Waveform coaster — undulating carved curves radiating from the centre

The Waveform

Undulating curves that ripple outward with every turn — the gentlest motion in the line.

$25.00View & buy
The Resonance coaster — concentric rings like ripples on water

The Resonance

Concentric rings cut like ripples on still water, shifting against each other as they turn.

$25.00View & buy
The Nexus coaster — interlaced petal pattern in birch

The Nexus

Interlaced petals in birch under clear acrylic — one twist sets the whole bloom turning.

$25.00View & buy
The Machinist coaster — triangular gear arrangement

The Machinist

Triangular gears, meshed with intent. The elegance of machinery, cut in birch.

$25.00View & buy

The Paradox

Four square gears. They shouldn't turn together — and yet they do, smoothly.

$25.00View & buy
The Ratchet coaster — serrated gears, shown with loose wooden gears

The Ratchet

Serrated gears with an industrial bite — the boldest voice at the table.

$25.00View & buy
The Mainframe coaster — radial circuit-like mosaic pattern

The Mainframe

A circuit-board mosaic echoing vintage mainframe trails — functional art for the digital era.

$25.00View & buy
The Webwork coaster — spiral pattern inspired by a spider's web

The Webwork

A spider's web, engineered to spin — nature's geometry given a mechanism.

$25.00View & buy
The Letter Coaster — a birch kinetic coaster with the letter A as its centre hub, surrounded by letter-shaped gears

The Letter Coaster

Your letter, cut as gears. Choose any initial, A–Z — it becomes the centre hub the whole mechanism turns around.

$25.00View & buy
Four linked — one motion

Watch them move

This is the part a photograph can't show. Link the coasters edge to edge and a twist on one travels through the rest — four separate pieces turning as a single machine. On the right is the Cyclist, one of the eight further designs waiting in the full shop.

The Cyclist, in motion
Eight more designs live in the shop — and every one of them connects to the rest. See all seventeen

From the Workshop

The coasters are the beginning, not the whole story. Our kinetic wall clocks — dark-stained hardwood, light wood numerals, and a cut-out geometric heart — are on the bench now, being finished for their first run.

And then there are the globes: miniature worlds under glass, each one a tiny landscape you can turn in your hand and view from every side. Four seasons exist so far —

  • Blossom — violet & pink
  • Spring — pale sparkle, fresh green
  • Deep Blue
  • Autumn — ember orange

Neither line is in the shop yet, and we'd rather say so than promise a date. Join the first-run list and you'll be the first to know when they are.

Join the first-run list One email when they launch. Nothing else.
The Season Globes — four worlds so far
The Autumn season globe — miniature bare trees and ember-orange leaves under a glass dome on its black base, photographed outdoors in the woods
Autumn — out in the woods
Autumn, turning

Also from the bench — the lasered leaves

Not everything on this bench is built to move. These start as real oak leaves, a stag design laser-etched into the leaf itself; each leaf is then suspended in a floating display frame — held between two sheets of clear film, nothing glued down — so the light comes through and the etched lines read silver against the brown.

A real oak leaf with a stag design laser-etched into it, suspended in a black floating display frame
A stag, etched in oak
Close-up of the silver-etched stag design in a real oak leaf
The etching, up close
A laser-etched oak leaf suspended in its floating frame, light coming through
Suspended — the light does the rest

A separate line from the workshop — the leaves aren't in the online shop; ask us about them.

Wood wants
to move.

Edge profile of a kinetic coaster — layered hardwood with gear teeth cut through the middle layer
The layered build, edge-on

Nova Kinetica is a small workshop in rural Nova Scotia, and everything we make starts with the same suspicion: that a piece of wood on a table shouldn't just sit there.

So we cut gears into it. Each design begins as flat sheets of birch and hardwood and a question — can square gears turn? Can a ripple be a mechanism? — and ends as an object you operate with a fingertip: a coaster that blooms, a clipboard whose case is a gearbox, a clock whose centre is a turning geometric cut-out.

Everything is made here, in Nova Scotia, Canada. No assembly line, no warehouse — two makers, a laser, and a growing conviction that the things on your table should reward a second look.

— NOVA KINETICA, NOVA SCOTIA