Scott Constable and his wife, Ene Osteraas-Constable, are well versed in three holiday activities: gathering around tables, putting on parties, and doing good deeds. Scott’s a sculptor-cum–master woodworker and blogger whose handcrafted tables have been sold at New York’s ABC Carpet & Home—and also seat nearly 1,000 schoolchildren a day at Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard, at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. Ene, an artist and former public-event organizer, has thrown some of the biggest parties in America, including the famed Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. They combine their skills at Wowhaus, an organization that produces public art and private commissions. Working out of their Sebastopol home and Oakland workshop, they’ve created watershed markers for the city of Oakland and fish sculptures for the Ortega branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Here, Scott and Ene tell us how to bring our families together at a table. Wowhaus: by appointment only, 510-604-9588, 707-874-2395, thewowhaus.com, deepcraft.org

My mother always tried to force guests into the living room—at least for an aperitif—because otherwise they would inevitably end up around the table. Why is that? S: A table is the closest thing to architecture in the way that it can support human interaction and daily life. It’s one of the few communal places left in our lives.

How do you make gathering around the holiday table special? S: We give the table a hand-waxing with liquefied beeswax that has a little rosemary oil, which has a nice fragrance. E: We serve cider and pies baked with the last of the apples; we harvest lacinato kale from the garden and braise it with garlic and olive oil. There will be blackberry jam made with this summer’s especially sweet berries, pickled peppers, and nocino made last year from our green walnuts.

Your parties last way into the night. How do you throw a party that people don’t want to leave? E: I try to get everybody to participate. Friends play music, kids pick wildflowers or harvest in the garden, and others bring their favorite dishes.

Is the highly varnished dining room table—the kind Grandma covered up most of the year—going the way of cups and saucers? S: The idea of gathering at the table is an extension of this whole return to cooking and the home and Slow Food. Those are older values than the varnished formal dining table that never gets used.

Your tables have a natural finish, and you actually like acquired imperfections. S: It’s a different heirloom strategy, in a way. The furniture can actually embody the stories around it by the way it is worn, rather than by the way it’s protected. Instead of “This has been in my family for 150 years, and there’s not a scratch on it,” it’s more like “This is the year this part of the table caught on fire when a candle got knocked over.” You participate in the patina.

The Edible Schoolyard uses 32 of your tables. What sort of patina do those tables have now? E: The children treat them with care. After a year, there’s only one table in which someone scratched initials.

You believe furniture can actually add to the dining experience. S: Furniture can play a role in putting people at ease enough to get into the conversation.

How does the dynamic change with a bench at the table, and when would you use one instead of a chair? S: A bench is great for young children. The nice thing is that you can always squeeze in another person.

So chairs are for more formal situations? S: A chair invites leaning back. The next stage would be a chair with arms. When you get a little bit older, it gives you more support and you can sit there longer.

When you entertain a big crowd, what type of seating do you use? E: We mix chairs and benches in the same way people mix plates. And then people gravitate to what they like.

Wood is not always used in a sustainable way. How do you reconcile that in your work? S: I use only wood from sustainably harvested sources in my bioregion, from what’s known as horticultural salvage: trees that have fallen in a storm or have to be cut for power lines, landscaping, or development. When you approach a wood source in this way, you have a deeper connection to the place. Wood from a particular place tends to thrive in a particular place. It doesn’t suffer as much from humidity changes.

How do you make the daily experience at the table special? E: Even at breakfast, my Estonian grandmother would use a tablecloth, light candles, and have flowers throughout the year. So we light candles at breakfast. It’s a simple pleasure. Everything you bring to the table has meaning.

You have a teenage daughter. How do you get her to share in family dinner? E: It’s understood that no matter what else is happening, we’re going to see her at the table. Having that as an established ritual is wonderful, especially when there are so many other competing influences. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to us about something, yet inevitably when she chooses to talk, it will be at the table. That’s when the conversation starts.