All our furniture designs start with hand-hewn logs from early log structures. Their colors and rough textures play against the polished glass, steel, and canvas we use for table tops and other parts. Rough/smooth, antique/contemporary, hand/machine, heavy/light...the contrasts create a unique impact. The original frontiersmen built to last, first trimming tree trunks flat on two sides, and hoisting, notching, and joining them to form cabin walls. They then sealed the walls against wind and rain, troweling the chinking made from mixtures of clay, sand, horsehair, or straw between the rounded edges of the logs. Antique buildings are getting harder to find. Time and weather have taken their toll. We search the back roads and hollows in mountainous south central Pennsylvania, looking for log structures that are just past habitability, yet with sound logs, beams, and joists. We have been lucky to accumulate
a modest stockpile of these beautiful materials. They are now waiting
for their new incarnations. |