JOHN HOUSHMAND’S RECLAIMED WOOD FURNITURE
by Jill Fehrenbacher
New York’s John Houshmand creates what he calls “urban organic furniture.” Large slabs of rough-cut timber (most of it reclaimed or salvaged) are married with simple, modern design. Bark, grain, and cracks are left in place. Sometimes the result can be a little backwoodsy, but when it works, it’s stunning. By the nature of the process, every piece is different, sometimes dramatically so.
There is a huge inventory of old-growth timber in this country- structural beams and floorboards bound up in disused factories and warehouses. When those buildings are demolished, some of that wood ends up being remilled and reused (most often as flooring), but a disheartening amount ends up in landfills. The vast stands of old-growth timber that were cut to fuel the industrial revolution are ideally suited to fuel a new design-driven green revolution. This resource can’t last forever, of course, but in the meantime it deserves the thoughtful treatment given to it by Houshmand and others like Moe Studio, RG Furniture, and Scrapile.
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