Newport mansion revives 1500s staircase craft with mortise-and-wedge joinery

A stairway goes up to nowhere in a woodshop. No grand foyer at the bottom, no upper floor waiting at the top—just a full-scale helical structure surrounded by tools, machinery, and carefully prepared pieces of wood. But this unfinished staircase is also something much more: an intersection of centuries-old craftsmanship and contemporary engineering. Wondering what it is? Well, there is a stairway being built for the restoration of a historic home in Newport, Rhode Island. It is a Mark Richey Woodworking’s design and a revival of a late 16th century European method of building stairs, and uses modern computer modeling and manufacturing technology to achieve accurate results.