Carlos Castro’s dog, Robert, leans forward in the front seat of the truck as they drive back to the workshop. A little grizzled but alert, he joins Carlos at most of his work sites, surveying the scene and keeping an eye on materials as they’re unloaded.
The eldest of two shop dogs, Robert is Carlos’ shadow. The 10-year-old Jack Russell mix Carlos has raised since he was 2 years old clocks in at 20 wiry, affable pounds. “He goes wherever I go,” Carlos says. “If the client doesn’t accept dogs, I say, ‘Sorry, I can’t do it.’”
The answer comes easily, with the certainty that guides much of Carlos’ work. Trained in marine mechanics and skilled at fabricating in wood and metal, the founder of Black Mangrove Woodworks in Bonita Springs approaches furniture with an engineer’s understanding of how things work and a designer’s attention to how they look and feel in a room.
Photography by Dan Cutrona
maker behind black mangrove woodworks marco island condo
Carlos Castro’s penchant for precision shows in the uniformity of a matching bar and shelving set inside a Marco Island condo by designer Maritza Capiro.
Back at his shop, the Mexican-born craftsman, raised in Naples, sits at the plywood desk he built and works through a low-slung cabinet, rendered in 3D detail. Every joint and dimension is mapped before a single board gets cut. He rotates the model, zooms in on a corner where two pieces meet, and drags the mouse to adjust his view. “I won’t build anything unless I have it drawn out [in the software],” he says. Early in his furniture- making career, Carlos began learning 3D modeling programs to create more precise, ambitious works while saving time and materials. “You avoid a lot of mistakes,” he adds. Over the past three years, he’s been working through more advanced design and engineering programs, like Rhino and Mozaik, processes that larger makers may divide among specialized departments or outsource. For Carlos, technology doesn’t replace creative judgment; he uses it as another tool to deepen his craft.
Artistry runs through his practice. The murals on his studio walls contrast with his sleek, wood creations. “My buddy Collin Miller did this,” he says, pointing to a Pepto-Bismol pink bird painted on the wall, near the back door. Around its head, a short tongue-in-cheek phrase reads, “How can you even call this art?” Carlos tested his own muralist skills, stenciling the neighboring Keith Haring-inspired feature, with a latte-colored background and dancing, jumping figures converging around the Black Mangrove logo.
Carlos commissioned Jon Howell, a Southern California graphic designer and skimboarder he follows on Instagram, to create the emblem, which hints back to Carlos’ high school days spent skimming the Gulf. He also called on Naples-based illustrator Oona Watkins, whose work often explores aquatic and conservation themes, to design a larger insignia that appears on his work shirts. The image depicts an alligator nestled against a mangrove sapling, a nod to his hometown landscape that inspired the company’s name.
Photography by Brian Tietz
Photography by Carlos Castro
Photography by Brian Tietz
Photography by Brian Tietz
Photography by Carlos Castro
Photography by Brian Tietz
Photography by Carlos Castro
Photography by Brian Tietz
Shelves and storage racks filled with sanders, drills and screws line the walls in Black Mangrove’s industrial shop behind Ceremony Brewing, where Carlos made the white oak bar, which he carefully installed around structural posts. He has equipped himself to keep every part of the process in his shop, in his hands. Welding equipment stands next to drill presses, a scissor-lift table used to maneuver heavy materials and a CNC router, which turns digital renderings into precisely cut components that Carlos then wrests into form. A mechanic at heart, he sources most of his tools and machinery secondhand, often in disrepair, from Facebook Marketplace. “I just buy it in cash, I clean it and I fix it,” he says, with a shrug.
Before launching Black Mangrove in 2018, Carlos studied marine mechanics at Lorenzo Walker Technical College in Naples, then took a job as a repairman with a landscaping company, where he’d fabricate and weld replacement doors for the company’s trailers and keep their mowers fighting fit. Access to scrap wood came with the territory. “I started grabbing boards; they had a lot of character to them,” he says. “I’d weld the legs with spare pieces of metal I had lying around.” He taught himself to make furniture, refining his eye for design and his understanding of how things are built. “When it comes to stuff I like, I get obsessed,” he says.
His commissions now range from residential millwork for firms like Calusa Bay and Design West to visually driven hospitality projects, like Narrative Coffee Roasters in Mercato, where he made the wooden tables and steel hanging planters. Most recently, Carlos completed the built-in booths at Ce Soir, Bayfront Naples’ sultry, new French neo-brasserie. The curved banquettes marry brass kickplates and cylindrical insets; the gently arcing seatbacks belie complex engineering.
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Photography by Carlos Castro
maker behind black mangrove woodworks black cabinetry
Fluted millwork framed by softened arches recurs throughout the woodworker’s residential and commercial work.
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Photography by Carlos Castro
A side table built around an heirloom ship’s wheel.
Carlos applies the same level of precision and thoughtfulness to buzzy commercial projects as he would to a smaller, sentimental request. When a client brought him an old ship’s wheel belonging to his grandfather, Carlos mounted it on a mahogany base and topped it with glass, turning a relic into a functional side table.
Work boots shuffle across the sawdust- coated concrete floors as he makes his way from a machine that stretches above his head to the carpet-topped work table made from plywood. He lifts Robert to sit on the soft surface, a panting overseer with a wagging tail surveying the scene. Every few hours, he takes a break from his work to let Robert and Rowdy, a large hound, out into the shop’s narrow backyard. The dogs remain a constant in the self-taught maker’s evolving skillset.