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The January/February 2010 issue of Up North, The Magazine of Northern New England, includes a story by Shelagh Talbot. Photos are by Shelagh Talbot and Fran Emmons. Click on the image of each page to see each page as it ran in the magazine.
Organic Furnishings by Native Woods
Article in January/February issue of Up North magazine
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Maine has always been known as a state that fosters individualism. Maine people have a way of looking at life that others respect – even the state’s license plate echoes that individualism – Maine – the way life should be. This is especially true in the arts and the myriad crafts this state is well known for. In East Wilton, Maine there is a company, Native Woods that combines an extraordinary natural artistry with fine woodworking.
Owners Chris and Gary Krauss take the wood that other craftsmen might eschew and use it as the focus for their unique, award-winning furniture and accessories.
A fourth-generation woodworker, Gary has always been fascinated with unusual wood – the more twists and gnarls the better. The wood he chooses is the stuff other woodworkers might throw away, and in fact, this is the basis of his creations today. Twenty years ago, as a cabinetmaker and master carpenter, he observed wood being tossed, just because the grain wasn’t straight, or there was an offending knothole. Gary celebrates the odd grain, the strange knothole, and the tortured burl and turns each piece of furniture made with this kind of wood into something that is truly one of a kind. As his wife Chris notes, "You won’t find anything like this at Ethan Allen or any other mass producer of furniture."
“A good piece of wood for me is probably firewood for someone else,” Gary observes. “In regular furniture-making you pretty much manipulate the wood completely to make the item. Here we allow the wood itself to influence what’s being done.” His working philosophy is a simple and very sensible one. “I believe that sustainable forestry begins with wood-use efficiency,” he says. “For me, wood-use efficiency begins with a search for low value, under-utilized logs, often destined for the pulp mill. Not too many years ago the first cut, or bark edge of the log, was thrown away. Now I utilize the whole tree, from bark to heartwood for my furniture and design pieces.”
Here’s an example: Birdseye maple, a nice hardwood, is often used for pallets, the kind you see being shuffled around factories with piles of inventory stacked on them. Gary, however, turns this “waste” wood into elegant tabletops that have folks exclaiming over the delicate detail of thousands of little “eyes” that embellish the grain. He mixes up the different woods too – often you will find an item, like a table, with a Birdseye maple top and darker cherry legs. This combining of various woods just makes each piece more beautiful. Gary is miserly with scraps too – an end bit of cherry can be carved into elegant leaves to add decorative touches to bureaus, cabinet doors, shelving and molding. If there is any waste generated, it is used to heat the workshop, or in the case of sawdust and shavings, provide bedding for cows at the dairy farm next door.
At first, it took some doing to get local loggers on board with them. “After all,” Chris says, “the logging industry is based on finding the straightest tree with as few defects as possible. We, however, celebrate the weird, celebrate the struggle most trees have to go through to survive, and now we have loggers practically competing with each other to find us unusual stuff.”
Gary also enlists the services of sawyer Mark Prentiss from Industry, Maine. Mark has worked with him for many years and knows what his friend requires.
These days the business is thriving, with many pieces being shipped off every week. Nonetheless, it has taken years of work and times fraught with setbacks for Chris and Gary to achieve their hard-won success. In 2002 there was a terrible fire. The workshop, the inventory, the huge barn, and half the house went up in flames. “There wasn’t even a tape measure left,” Chris sighed.
Ironically, it was this life-changing tragedy that set Gary on the path to using the whole tree in his woodworking. Their home in East Wilton, now resurrected and beautifully expanded, is a dramatic showcase for their furniture and the other items they create. The entry is simple, dramatic, drawing you to step inside. Passages from one room to the next, as well as the many windows are made more dramatic by the freeform molding that surrounds them. It’s like walking into a woodsy yet very sophisticated work of art. There is an unspoken invitation to explore, see things in a new light, and just appreciate the artistry of the unusual. This can create wonderful opportunities if one has the wherewithal to design their own home.
“If you’re going to build yourself a dream house, why fill it with ordinary furnishings?” Chris queries. “Why not fill it with something unique, something rare and special that you can truly call your own.”
More and more home designs utilize the open plan. So, instead of standing up against a wall, many of Native Woods’ pieces are created to act as spacers between living areas, with embellishments and carvings on all four sides.
When Gary gets an unusual log, he lets it dictate the kind of furniture it will become. He prefers local wood - beech, maple and cherry. He can visualize the design of every item he has in mind from the wood arriving in his workshop. “This is where the magic happens,” Chris smiles.
After he figures out what to build, Gary cuts the pieces that will later be assembled into a piece of furniture or a special accessory. It’s almost like creating a kit – each item is carefully manufactured in that way. Sometimes Gary will have to wait for just that right log to complete what he has imagined, but he has always been able to find what he wants. Once he has all the parts, the individual pieces are flattened, planed and ground in preparation for assembly. Then the item is transferred to finishing rooms where it is painstakingly sanded and finished.
This is truly a family business. Their daughter Danielle is integrally involved in marketing with Chris and son-in-law Christopher Keene can be found in the sanding room. It takes about five days for him to finish each item. Each assembled piece is sanded at 120 and 220 grit. In the finish room Christopher starts with Velvet Oil and a 400 grit hand sanding Then he applies up to four coats of urethane over the Velvet Oil. The result is a tactile finish like the finest silk – astonishingly smooth and velvety.
“Men are attracted to our furniture because it’s robust and substantial,” says Chris. “Women love it because of the feel as well as the design. It is a natural evolution of rustic camp furniture – an elegance that is not overpowering,” she continues. “You can have one of our pieces in a Manhattan apartment or a cabin in the woods. It works well anywhere.”
Chris credits Martha Stewart for encouraging individualism when it comes to decorating. “Most of our mothers had a certain style to their homes, like ‘Early American’ or ‘Modern’ and everything in the home had to fit that style,” she says. “Martha taught us to be more eclectic and have more fun. This has created a great opportunity for individual artisans because we can work with you to make your surroundings special. For example, if you need a table in a special size we can do that – you don’t have to settle for something mass produced.”
In 2001 Native Woods was chosen to design and build the ‘Governor’s Table” for then Maine Governor Angus King. The table is 18 feet long and five feet wide and sits in the Cabinet Room at the statehouse in Augusta. In 2007, the company was commissioned to build ‘live edge’ dining tables for the Huts to Trails project in western Maine. This amazing project was featured in the 2009 July/August edition of Up North magazine.
In 2005 The Western Mountains Alliance awarded Chris with the prestigious King Cummings Leadership Award for recognition of her work in making the positive strides that help to preserve economic stability in western Maine. This award also recognizes Chris’s commitment to the preservation of rural heritage and natural resources. She was also the first Maine recipient of the Northern Forest Community Partnership Award. "I was thrilled and so honored," she says. This award is in recognition of "exemplary work to build cross-boundary partnerships to advance the well-being of the Northern Forest and its communities."
Native Woods embodies those criteria as well. It’s a beautiful thing to celebrate those trees that are gnarled, diseased, and twisted from their years of struggle to survive.
“The more heavily diseased and rotten the logs, the more beautiful character comes through the bark edge,” remarked Gary to Amy VanHaren, who wrote about the company in an article that appeared in the June 2007 edition of AMC Outdoors. “Trees that face difficult circumstances are often the most spectacular inside," he added. That could be said of many people as well. Having an item from Native Woods in your home is a reminder of that struggle and an affirmation of how beautiful things can come from it.
Visit Native Woods on the Web at www.nativewoods.net or email gary@nativewoods.net. Their phone is 207.645.2400