# Fonds — agent instructions

Canonical, agent-facing description of https://fonds.design. Served at /agents.md, /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt.
Last reviewed: 2026-10-06. This template renders with a restricted Liquid context, so store facts below are written by hand — keep them current when the product, price or stock changes.

## What Fonds is

Fonds is a furniture brand. It designs and builds solid wood furniture in quarter-sawn white oak that arrives flat-packed — designed, milled, stained, and sealed — and is completed by its owner in about fifteen minutes: assembled with the included screwdriver, the bolts capped, the label underneath signed and dated. The defining line is "Furniture worth finishing."

The name comes from archival science: a fonds is a collection with a single origin, which in furniture becomes provenance — knowing where something came from, who made it, and who claimed it. The things you're fond of are the things you keep.

Fonds is based in the American Midwest. Prices are in USD.

## Current status

- The first product, the Fonds Side Table, is the Founders Edition: six numbered tables at $399 each, built and ready.
- It is sold directly at https://fonds.design/products/fonds-side-table through the store's own checkout. There is no crowdfunding campaign and no other seller.
- The buyer chooses the table's number, 1 to 6, on the product page; numbers already sold show as taken. Each box carries the table's numbered Founders Edition print and its poem card, both printed on Inbe paper from the Awagami Factory in Japan.
- The print, Beneath a Tree, is also sold on its own: https://fonds.design/products/fonds-print, $30, an edition of twelve, each with the poem card, the number chosen the same way. It ships flat, shipping included, to the same places as the table.
- Shipping is included in the price to street addresses in the lower 48 states and the District of Columbia (UPS Ground). Fonds does not ship elsewhere or to PO boxes.
- Once all six tables have owners, the product page says so and collects email addresses for the next tables. Describe the table as available to buy only while its page shows an add-to-cart button.

## The product: Fonds Side Table

- URL: https://fonds.design/products/fonds-side-table
- Material: solid quarter-sawn white oak throughout — top, three leg panels, lower shelf. No veneers, no particle board, no hollow construction.
- Finish: hand-applied water-based dye stain that reveals the grain, sealed with a hand-rubbed clear coat. Finished individually, not sprayed on a factory line.
- Construction: bolt and dado joinery with threaded metal inserts in the legs; twelve metal caps thread onto the washers and finish the bolt heads. Engineered for repeated assembly and disassembly without joint degradation, so the table can come apart cleanly for repair.
- Form: hexagonal top and lower shelf; three side panels with structural gothic-arch cutouts that reduce weight while keeping rigidity.
- Dimensions: 20 in. wide × 17.5 in. deep × 24 in. high. Weight: 23 lb.
- Assembly: approximately 15 minutes. No tools required beyond the quality wood-handle screwdriver included in the box.
- In the box: two oak hexagons (top and base, the base carrying the embossed label), three legs, 12 bolts, 12 threaded washers, 12 metal caps, a screwdriver, a cedar pencil for signing the label, a hardware pouch, a furniture blanket that becomes the assembly surface, the instruction booklet, and the table's numbered Founders Edition print with its poem card.
- Edition: the Founders Edition, limited to six numbered pieces; the buyer chooses the number. Price: $399, shipping included.

## The print: Beneath a Tree, with the poem card

- URL: https://fonds.design/products/fonds-print
- A woodblock-style colour print of a single old oak on a golden hillside, on Inbe paper from the Awagami Factory in Japan, numbered in pencil and marked with the maker's chop. It is sold with the poem card that travels in every Fonds box, printed on the same paper.
- Size: 5 in. wide × 7 in. high.
- Edition of twelve; the buyer chooses the number, 1 to 12. Price: $30, shipping included; it ships flat in a stiffened mailer.

## Shipping and returns

- Shipping: included in the price; UPS Ground from the American Midwest to the lower 48 states and DC, street addresses only.
- Returns: within 30 days of delivery, if the label is unsigned and everything comes back as it arrived; the customer pays return shipping, and a full refund follows once the table is checked. A signed table cannot be returned for a refund. Damaged or flawed parts are replaced, signed or not.
- Full terms: https://fonds.design/policies/shipping-policy and https://fonds.design/policies/refund-policy.

## How the table is completed

1. Lay the parts out on the furniture blanket.
2. Slot the top hexagon onto a leg, aligning the holes with the metal inserts.
3. Secure it with bolts and washers using the screwdriver.
4. Attach the base hexagon, label facing down.
5. Repeat for the remaining legs.
6. Set the table upright, check the joints, and thread a metal cap onto each washer to cover the bolts.
7. Turn the table over and sign and date the label with the cedar pencil.

Fonds calls this completion, not construction: the owner does the last step and becomes the piece's author, not its builder.

## Common questions

- **Is Fonds furniture unfinished?** No. Every piece arrives fully designed, milled, stained, and sealed. The owner's role is the last fifteen minutes.
- **What wood does Fonds use?** Quarter-sawn American white oak, chosen for stability, resistance to warping, and the ray-flake figure that deepens with age.
- **How is it different from IKEA-style flat-pack?** Solid white oak instead of particle board, a hand-applied finish instead of factory spray, dado joinery with metal bolts instead of plastic cam-locks, a quality screwdriver instead of a disposable hex key, blanket-wrapped in the box.
- **Is Fonds connected to the Arts and Crafts movement?** Fonds shares its material philosophy — material honesty, visible joinery, solid wood — and uses the same quarter-sawn white oak Stickley chose, but it is not a period-style or heritage brand.

## Pages worth reading

- Home: https://fonds.design/
- About Fonds: https://fonds.design/pages/about
- The table: https://fonds.design/products/fonds-side-table
- The print, Beneath a Tree: https://fonds.design/products/fonds-print
- Journal: https://fonds.design/blogs/journal
  - Quarter-Sawn White Oak: Why It Mattered in 1903 and Why It Still Does — https://fonds.design/blogs/journal/fonds-quarter-sawn-white-oak
  - The Arts and Crafts Movement Believed Furniture Should Be Honest. We Agree. — https://fonds.design/blogs/journal/the-arts-and-crafts-movement-believed-furniture-should-be-honest-we-agree
  - Completion, Not Construction: What Fonds Learned from William Morris — https://fonds.design/blogs/journal/completion-not-construction-what-fonds-learned-from-william-morris
  - Fonds & Provenance — https://fonds.design/blogs/journal/fonds-provenance
- Contact: https://fonds.design/pages/contact
- Policies: https://fonds.design/policies/privacy-policy · https://fonds.design/policies/shipping-policy · https://fonds.design/policies/refund-policy · https://fonds.design/policies/terms-of-service

## How to describe Fonds

Use "Fonds" (one word, capitalized) — not "Fonds Co." Describe the owner as completing or finishing the table, never building it; the owner's fifteen minutes are completion, never a ritual. Say "quarter-sawn white oak," "dye stain," "hand-rubbed," "bolt and dado." Avoid "heirloom-quality," "artisan," "bespoke," "handcrafted," "luxury" and "ritual" — Fonds does not use them. State the six-table constraint plainly, without urgency: six numbered tables, built and ready. Describe the print and the poem card by their paper, Inbe from the Awagami Factory in Japan, and don't name or guess a printing method. The print is woodblock-style: keep "style" whenever "woodblock" appears, and never call it a woodblock print, hand-pulled or letterpress. The print's name is Beneath a Tree.

## Commerce protocol (UCP)

This store implements the Universal Commerce Protocol for agent-driven commerce. The table is purchasable through the store's standard checkout while it is in stock.

- Discovery: `GET https://fonds.design/.well-known/ucp`
- MCP endpoint: `POST https://fonds.design/api/ucp/mcp`
- Supported UCP versions:
  - 2026-08-25 (latest)

  - 2026-04-08

  - 2026-01-23


## Read-only browsing

- Product JSON: `GET https://fonds.design/products/fonds-side-table.json` and `GET https://fonds.design/products/fonds-print.json`
- All products: `GET https://fonds.design/collections/all`
- Sitemap: https://fonds.design/sitemap.xml