In this letter I will try to explain our “green” philosophy as I think there are many different philosophies a company can maintain in this conversation. As noted on my bio, I share a personal alliance with the ancient religion of Shintoism. While it is impossible to summarize Shintoism in a single sentence, it is possible to summarize its relevance to “green” building. Shintoism is founded on the belief that one must pay respects to ancestors and objects that have come before it. This includes all objects of nature, and specifically for these purposes – trees. As a furniture maker, I feel it is absolutely necessary to value the sacrifice the tree has given us in order to produce our furniture.

We pay respect to the tree by not being wasteful. This includes not discarding unused “cut-off”. In the past, we have donated our cut-off to a local manufacturer who then makes other pieces of furniture from a collective scrap pile. We also pay respect to the tree by doing our best to showcase the inherit beauty of the tree and in our judgment showcase wood’s natural beauty in the best way possible for everyone to gain an appreciation.

There is a relatively new term being applied to a certain core of furniture maker in the green movement as “heirloom design”. Quite simply, this concept maintains that sustainability is best created when a piece of furniture is designed with the durability to last generations; therefore the need to produce replacements is decreased.

Another aspect of our “green” plan is to use locally harvested woods for our manufacturing process. I feel this approach to materials reduces our carbon footprint over the larger manufacturers who claim to use “green” materials in their furniture produced in Chinese factories and then shipped overseas. On a side note, I have visited a “so-called” green factory in China to observe the manufacturing process first-hand and there is nothing in the process that could be considered green as I observed and breathed to pollution created and the landscape desecration.

In several of our custom projects, we have worked with reclaimed materials originally from building demolitions. We have used reclaimed southern yellow pine floor joists and repurposed the wood into interior doors and reclaimed oak beams have been turned into benches and banquets. When an exotic wood (teak or mahogany) is requested, we source our materials from Teak and Woods, a company that utilizes responsibly forested wood and are currently awaiting their FSC certification.

When we are finishing our furniture we have two methods we prefer to utilize. For our studio line and all other stand alone custom furniture, we hand apply all finishes. By applying finish by hand not only is the final result beautiful, but we do not add hazardous air pollution to our environment. On the occasions when we are building a larger, commercial project we employ the local “green-conscious” furniture finishers, Surface Environment. Surface Environment is committed to only using the best and most environmentally safe products.