Carved by Nature: the Sculptural Appeal and Origins of Mushroom Wood

Reclaimed, Char Dyed, Mushroom Wood paneling at McCann Erickson offices in New York City.

The paneling that clads the elevator bank walls in McCann Erickson’s New York offices is silky black and heavily grooved, and it looks as though a sculptor has drawn a gouging tool across its shiny surface to make a pattern. But no tools were needed to craft these grooves; in fact, the wood developed these traits after years of service in the cultivation of mushrooms. Though it’s technically a mix of hemlock and cypress, we call it mushroom wood. 

Mushrooms grow wild in the woods, and thrive in dark, damp conditions where there’s plenty of decaying plant matter to provide the organism with energy—no sunlight required. To recreate these conditions, mushroom farmers set up growing beds indoors, often building structures that look a bit like the shelves inside a cheese cave, only they’re prepared with trays of manure and substrate. The beds are built from hemlock or cypress, and the substrate is typically derived from a grain like millet or rye on which the spores can grow. The manure contains enzymes which erode the growing boards over time, and after about fifteen years, they’re no longer suitable for use on the farm.

Mushrooms growing.

The dark and damp beds of a mushroom farm.

This is the moment when we harvest them: we have a relationship with mushroom growers in the mid-Atlantic region, and we regularly trade old boards for new ones. By the time we get them, the old boards have developed a rich color and texture that makes them ideal for interiors that call for rustic or boldly textured paneling. The design advantage of mushroom wood is, paradoxically, the uniformity of its quirks. The enzymatic erosion weather the wood’s surface substantially, but does so very evenly on boards as long as sixteen feet.

Harvested Mushroom Wood.

When the wood arrives at our mill in Pine Plains, we remove the nails, power wash it, dry it in a kiln, then mill it, and it’s ready for use. We offer mushroom wood in four ways. There are two types of mushroom wood that can be used for flooring: Backside with original saw kerf, and New Face. Backside has a rich caramel patina, while New Face is lighter, and more uniform in color throughout. The two Sculpted forms of mushroom wood are suitable for paneling or ceilings, as in this dramatic installation at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Our Sculpted Face, which can be found on the walls of Donostia Restaurant in London, is caramel-colored and has naturally sculpted and radial kerfed faces giving it a complex surface design. Our Sculpted Face can be Char Dyed, as seen in the McCann Erickson offices where it offers a dramatic, sophisticated design element that isn’t fussy.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood adorns the ceiling of the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City.

Reclaimed, Sculpted, Mushroom Wood Paneling at Donastia Restaurant.

Reclaimed, Mushroom Wood Paneling at a private residence in the desert.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood, Sculpted, paneling.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood, New Face, flooring.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood, Char Dyed, paneling.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood, Backside, flooring.

The Hudson Company on the High Line

New York’s High Line is renowned as a botanical oasis in the middle of the busy, formerly gritty neighborhood of West Chelsea. With plantings thoughtfully chosen by Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf, the elevated park is home to over 120 species: coneflowers, sumac, grasses and birch trees, to name just a few. Some are native to the region, and some are exotic. But plant diversity on the High Line isn’t restricted to the living specimens that make it lush and green. Thanks to the success of The Hudson Company’s wood-sourcing trip to India in 2017, there is teak to be found on the High Line in benches, steps, seating and furniture. The journey of this wood from a teak forest somewhere in Southeast Asia centuries ago, to exquisite buildings in Hyderabad’s old Muslim quarter, to New York City’s High Line illustrates how architectural preservation—even the accidental kind—can give materials a second life when they’re salvaged sustainably. 

Teak, known to botanists as tectona grandis, evolved for harsh conditions, which is why it’s long been a popular choice for decking material, outdoor furniture, and boats. It’s native to the hot, tropical climates of India, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and it’s cultivated in parts of Africa and the Caribbean, but half the world’s naturally occuring teak comes from Myanmar. Teak is a hardwood with a high oil content and tight grain, which gives it great tensile strength and a natural resistance to weather. It’s so strong, in fact, that it can wear out metal tooling and blades over time. It’s also very insect-resistant, and tends to be impervious to termite infestations. All of these qualities have led architects and builders in tropical climates to choose teak for centuries, using it to construct doors, beams, wall panels, and floors. Intricately carved screens and pilasters made from teak can be found in buildings throughout Southeast Asia.

One of the great places to source vintage teak wood elements today is Hyderabad, India. Today, Hyderabad is widely known as one of India’s largest high tech centers (it’s nickname: Cyberabad) and travelers who visit on business are likely to spend most of their time in the city’s modern downtown, which is full of glass and steel high-rises. But old Hyderabad is a treasure trove of historic temples, mosques and houses dating from the 16th century, including Golconda Fort, a former center for the diamond trade and the capital of the Qutb Shahi dynasty. Hyderabad’s historic architecture is distinct, with elements of Hindu and Muslim styles reflecting its complex cultural heritgage. 

Buildings from the 16th and early 17th centuries built during the Qutb Shahi period drew design elements from Persian architecture, with domes and soaring arches. At the beginning of the 18th century, Mughal rulers were responsible for building Hyderabad’s city wall. The families of the Nizam dynasty, which followed the Mughal era and ruled Hyderabad from 1724-1948, built palaces in an increasingly European style, because they ruled as vassals of the British Empire. All of these successive dynasties in Hyderabad represented a mix of different cultures and religions, and as with much of India—and multi-ethnic cities around the world—various populations tended to remain in their enclaves.

Because it resisted westernization and modernization in the latter part of British period, the largely Muslim older sections of Hyderabad tended to remain intact, if a bit down at the heels. This meant that much of the historic architecture escaped the rush of bulldozing and new construction that has transformed the city’s modern, high-tech center, and remains a key source of beautiful old teak wood. When The Hudson Company visited, we made trips to two sites where well-preserved teak can be found. Demolition in the old city yielded boards as long as 22 feet, some dating back to the 17th century or even earlier. Then we worked with an aggregator who organizes auctions of antique beams, boards, doors, and exterior elements. Ultimately, we gathered 10,000 BF (that’s one shipping container’s worth) of teak, and sent it to our facility in Pine Plains where it was milled. We worked with Friends of the High Line and Sciame Construction to source the wood and find what was needed to craft seating, steps, and other design elements. It’s gratifying to see that these pieces of antique timber, which grew centuries ago in India or elsewhere in Southeast Asia, survived long enough in the buildings of old Hyderabad to be harvested and given a second act in New York City. Visitors may not know the wood’s story, but they can admire its natural beauty and appreciate its impressive weather-resistance on a blustery New York day.

Inside Man: Contemplating Art and the Interior World with Donald Judd

Donald Judd, 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, 1982-1986, Mill aluminum, 100 units each 41 x 51 x 72 inches.

The artistic legacy of sculptor Donald Judd (1928–1994) is getting a lot of attention this spring: there is a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art curated by Ann Temkin, and a massive plywood installation at Gagosian Gallery, on view for the first time since 1981. This flurry of activity has fallen, quite by chance, at an odd moment: you can’t see either exhibition in person, because—as of this writing—institutions across the United States (and especially in New York City) are closed to the public in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. There’s also a book, and this you can read anywhere: Donald Judd Spaces, edited by Flavin Judd, Rainer Judd and the Judd Foundation, which offers newly published photographs from Judd’s archive, as well as five essays by Judd himself.

Judd is typically classified as a sculptor, but he didn’t like that term, nor did he like “minimalism.” He described his efforts as “another activity of some kind.” He began his career as a painter, and in the late 1950s and early ‘60’s, he worked as an art critic. This role gave him access to the postwar New York art world, where at the time Abstract Expressionism reigned supreme. As a blue chip artist today, Judd’s work is immediately recognizable: geometric, orderly, colorful, architectural, and smooth. Judd wasn’t precious about craftsmanship: once he began making three-dimensional objects, he started working with industrial fabricators, especially a commercial sheet-metal shop called Bernstein Brothers, providing them with detailed drawings and plans. In 1968, he bought a cast iron building on Spring Street in SoHo, and renovated it floor by floor, using it as his art studio and residence.

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Judd in the early 1960’s in his studio on East 19th Street in New York City.

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“Untitled” (1991) is among the many untitled works in ”Judd” at the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition opens on March 1.Credit...Donald Judd Art; Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Zack DeZon for The New York Times.

In 1971, he rented a small house in Marfa, Texas, eventually assembling the compound around the Ayala de Chinati Ranch and the abandoned buildings of U.S. Army Fort D. A. Russell, which would in 1979 become the Chinati Foundation, with support from the Dia Art Foundation. In addition to the collection of important large-scale works by Judd and contemporaries like Claes Oldenburg, Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain, the Chinati Foundation preserves Judd’s living quarters and studio exactly as he specified. The Judd foundation does the same in New York where his Spring Street loft building is carefully preserved as a working and living space.

Writing of the MoMA retrospective in the New York Times in February of this year, critic Holland Cotter described Judd’s early forays into 3D work thus: “It was three-dimensional, so it wasn’t painting but, he claimed, it wasn’t sculpture either. He called the new works “specific objects,” and left it at that. He titled all of these objects “Untitled,” and insisted they were devoid of metaphors, personal data or real-world references — all the lures, in other words, that art traditionally uses to draw us in.” It may have been devoid of “lures,” but it wasn’t devoid of references: Judd’s specific objects, and the dwellings and studio spaces he designed them in, were the very “personal data” and “real-world references” Cotter believed Judd eschewed. Judd was a creature of the interior.

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An installation view showing, in the foreground, “Untitled” (1963/1975); one of Judd’s earliest experimental objects (from 1961), left, with a baking pan sunk in its surface; and, right, a 1963 piece that shows him playing with space. Credit: Donald Judd Art; Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Zack DeZon for The New York Times.

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Some of Judd’s objects come with special effects: Peer into either end of a row of the four aluminum boxes that make up this 1969 work and you’ll find that they form a long blue corridor with a reflective surface. Credit: Donald Judd Art; Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Zack DeZon for The New York Times.

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Donald Judd - Daybed, 1979, Pine wood (with canvas mattress). 112 x 115 x 203 cm.

This is one of the key themes of Donald Judd Spaces, which brings readers into Judd’s material world. He placed objects and furniture in specific locations, and while he lived in New York and in Texas, he created works of art that themselves framed out space, with colors, forms, surfaces, and gaps. The Judd Foundation restored his residences and studios, so when visitors see them, they’re seeing something like a 20th century historic house museum rather than a collection of sculpture. The differences between his studio work and his forays into architectural preservation are mainly questions of scale: where he made room-size installations in his works of art, he also restored a SoHo building and conserved old structures on what is now the site of the Chinati Foundation, which could be read as gigantic Judd-type sculptures astride the landscape.

Right now during this indeterminate period of quarantine, it’s possible to read about Judd’s work, see some of his outdoor sculpture if you happen to be in Münster, Germany, the campus of Northern Kentucky University, or Marfa, Texas. You can watch an interview with Judd on YouTube via the Museum of Modern Art’s website—all part of a movement that’s taken shape in the past few weeks known as #MuseumFromHome. In a way, Judd’s work is particularly compelling right now because we’re experiencing an abundance of shared two-dimensional experiences: working remotely, reading the news on a tablet, playing games, streaming Netflix, even gazing out the window. The picture plane is all around us, signs and symbols everywhere. But inside, where we may least expect it, complexity and an abundance of forms in space abound. Our furniture, personal belongings, papers, and kitchen implements can all be seen, if we choose, as an interior landscape to be explored rather than overlooked or taken for granted. That’s the ironic twist of Judd’s temporarily hidden exhibitions: just thinking about them rather than seeing them—and indeed of Judd’s own spaces in New York and Texas—can make us see our own interior worlds in a new way.

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READ THE BOOK: DONALD JUDD SPACES

An unprecedented visual survey of the living and working spaces of the artist Donald Judd in New York and Texas.

The Art of Yun Hyong-keun: Where Nature and Abstraction Meet

Yun Hyong-keun at his atelier in Sinchon, 1974. Courtesy Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. Image Copyright: Yun Seong-ryeol.

Spend some time looking at a painting by artist Yun Hyong-keun (1928 – 2007), and you might imagine that you’re looking at a group of trees. Dark, vertical forms stand at either side of the canvas. Seen one way, they appear to be massive tree trunks on either side of an open clearing. Or seen another way, they could be the dark edges of a wooded area at night, and in between them, the beam of a flashlight splits the darkness. Yun Hyong-keun is a widely acclaimed abstract painter, but there is something unusually earthy about his works on paper and canvas. His compositions seem to echo the architecture of the natural world, not in a sweet or cloying way, but with a sense of nature’s great power. With the knowledge that he spent time as a dissident during the Korean war hiding in a forest, the sight of large, imposing trees is a complex thing to behold. Are they protectors? Do they portend danger? Yun Hyong-keun spent decades of his extraordinary career negotiating these forms two dimensionally, all the while exploring and expanding on traditional Korean painting and paper-making techniques.

Yun Hyong-Keun, Umber-Blue (1978). Oil on cotton. 80.6 cm x 100 cm. Courtesy Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. Image Copyright: Yun Seong-ryeol.

In an essay for Ocula Magazine written on the occasion of Yun’s exhibition at Venice’s Palazzo Fortuny in 2019, critic Sherry Paik recounted the artist’s harrowing youth during the decades of World War II, the Japanese occupation of Korea, and the Korean War. According to the exhibition’s curator, Kim Inhye, he never set out to be a political artist, whose work referenced or mocked propaganda. But the circumstances of his life wouldn’t permit him to be a bystander. During his childhood in the 1930’s in Cheongju, Korea was occupied by Japan, and he was 17 when the end of World War II terminated the occupation in 1945. Yun went to study painting at Seoul National University, but he participated in protests against the U.S. Military Government in Korea, which had established the school, and he was expelled. Because of his activities, Yun was then placed under surveillance and enrolled in an anti-Communist program designed to re-educate suspected communists called the Bodo League. In 1950, when the Korean War began, many members (some of whom didn’t even realize they had been signed up) were executed. Yun escaped arrest and death by hiding in the woods.

Yun Hyong-keun, Burnt Umber & Ultramarine (1989). Oil on linen. 45.5 x 61 cm. Courtesy Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. Image Copyright: Yun Seong-ryeol.

Remarkably, Yun never stopped thinking about art, or making it whenever he could. In the early 1950s, he met the artist Kim Whanki, who helped Yun enroll at Hongik University in Seoul where he continued painting. His work at this time was awash in color, and he used vivid hues to make abstract forms. He painted on hanji—a traditional Korean paper made from the bark of mulberry trees—on which color would bleed and give his abstract shapes soft, feathery edges. By the 1970s, Yun and Kim were both considered members of a movement in abstract Korean contemporary art called Dansaekhwa. Working during these decades in postwar Korea, artists like Yun and his contemporaries did not have access to abundant artists’ materials. They were creative, and used what they had at hand: Korean handmade paper (hanji), pencils and ink, even coal, burlap, and iron. According to Sherry Paik, the Dansaekhwa artists experimented with “ways of manipulating material, including soaking, pulling, pushing, dragging, or ripping paper.” 

Yun Hyong-keun, Untitled (1972). Oil on hanji (Korean mulberry paper). 49 x 33 cm. Courtesy Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. Image Copyright: Yun Seong-ryeol.

Yun Hyong-keun: A Retrospective, 2019 Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy. Photo credit: © Laziz Hamani / Courtesy: The Estate of Yun Hyong-keun.

Yun was never entirely at home in Korea for political reasons, but his work started to gain attention abroad in Japan in the mid-1970s. By this time he had begun using more creative materials, particularly burnt umber and ultramarine blue paint on raw linen or canvas.

He had an exhibition in 1976 at the Muramatsu Gallery in Tokyo, and collectors in Japan began to buy his work. In the early 1990s, American Artist Donald Judd visited Korea where he had an exhibition at the Inkong Gallery in Seoul. Judd was taken by Yun’s work, and invited him to visit America, and to show his work at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas in 1994. Yun was then selected by the government of Korea to represent the country at the 46th Venice Biennale—an achievement that would have been nearly impossible to imagine in Yun’s earlier life.

Yun passed away in 2007, aged 79. The exhibition of his work at the Palazzo Fortuny was a meaningful coda to his exhibition at the Venice Biennale several decades earlier. The space in which the exhibition was staged is a grand, imperfect, sometimes raw space, with a riot of textures and colors, surrounded by water. Yun’s work always reflected nature’s mystery. He used natural materials inventively throughout his life to realize his ideas, from mulberry bark paper and burnt umber to linen and charcoal. Seen against the backdrop of this idiosyncratic, historic setting—rather than workaday perfection of a typical white cube gallery—Yun’s paintings seemed right at home: works of art, perched on the line that divides abstract design from natural forms, made with the materials and tools at hand, mapping the edges of nature, as the water lapped against the building.

Yun Hyong-keun: A Retrospective, 2019, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy. Photo credit: © Laziz Hamani.

At Home in Germantown, New York, with Amanda Pays, Corbin Bernsen & Reclaimed Beams from The Hudson Company.

Above: Corbin and Amanda and sons at their new residence (the photo was taken by their oldest son’s girlfriend and became this year’s holiday card).

Actor Corbin Bernsen and his wife Amanda Pays, an interior designer, are seasoned serial renovators. According to a recent article in Remodelista, they’ve lived in 25 houses over their three-decade marriage. (Bernsen even has a film production company called “Star Handyman.”) The couple recently bid farewell to Los Angeles, moved east, and put down roots in the Hudson Valley, where changing seasons and snowfall are giving the family—who were used to sunshine and palm trees—a novel experience that they seem to relish. They bought an 1880s farmhouse in Germantown, NY that needed a gut renovation, but they’ve preserved as many original details as they could, and added in some selective antique touches.

Above: “We went down to the studs and nothing else,” says Corbin of the 1,700 square foot interior. “This is the equivalent of a bionic house.” Explains Amanda: “We replaced or added HVAC, all plumbing, all electric, insulation, new drywall, bathrooms, and the kitchen.”

The couple both come from renovator families: Pays’ father bought and fixed up old properties in southeast England where she grew up, and Bernsen became a skilled carpenter by learning from his uncle and his mother. To give their 1,700 square foot farmhouse a more open floor plan, they removed some walls on the first floor, and installed antique beams to add some rustic beauty to the interior as well as structural support where needed. To find the beams, they turned to their new neighbors, The Hudson Company. The beams they chose are from our collection of Reclaimed Hand Hewn Beams which are salvaged from barns and farmhouses in the Hudson Valley and Canada. Each one is different, but many of them share lovely features: mortise holes, pockets and check marks, which give this farmhouse interior a tactile connection to its architectural heritage. And in Pays and Bernsen’s beautifully restored home, they look like they've always been there.

Above: Corbin’s guitar stands in a corner of the guest room. The reclaimed beams used throughout came from The Hudson Company.

Above: The tub, along with three sinks, came from Hoffman’s Barn in Redhook, NY.

Above: The living space opens to a roomy dining area and kitchen. The cabinets are Ikea—with Ikea’s vertical-grooved Hittarp fronts in an off-white lacquer that Amanda painted herself. “This isn’t something they recommend but it worked well: even the chipping looks authentic. I used a heavy Kilz primer—no sanding—followed by two coats of Benjamin Moore Chelsea Gray in a satin finish.”

Above: The couple—he’s 65, she just turned 60—say they love their new surroundings and plan to stay upstate.

Above: The moody back room with new built-in bookshelves is the library/TV room and Corbin’s home office.

Above: The master bedroom has a conceptual headboard: Amanda dragged the driftwood home from a walk along the Hudson River.

Read the full piece on REMODELISTA.

The pennsylvania barn

This winter, The Hudson Company salvaged lumber from a large 19th century barn in York Springs, PA, a rural farming community in Adams County about 15 miles northeast of Gettysburg. This part of Pennsylvania briefly gained notoriety as a health retreat thanks to the York Sulphur Springs, a summer resort that catered to clientele from Baltimore and Philadelphia, and even hosted George and Martha Washington in 1799. But the construction of the regional railroad shifted traffic away from this part of the state in the 19th century, and it has remained a largely rural enclave ever since. There’s a strong sense of history in this part of the state. Gettysburg was the site of a key battle of the Civil War, and today Gettysburg National Military Park is the most visited battlefield in the United States. Adams County is also the gateway to Pennsylvania Dutch country, and there are nearly 80,000 Amish people—the descendants of Swiss Protestant settlers who eschew modern technology—living in Pennsylvania today. Horse-drawn carriages with bright orange traffic safety signs on the back are a common sight here.

The landscape and architecture of other parts of Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh, Scranton and Philadelphia—were drastically transformed by mining and industry in the 19th and 20th centuries, but this part of the state remains pastoral and green. So it’s no surprise that Pennsylvania is one of the only states in America that has several styles of barn construction named after it. Robert F. Ensminger, an emeritus professor of geography at Kutztown University, developed a typology in his 2003 book The Pennsylvania Barn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Distribution in North America (Johns Hopkins University Press.) Ensminger explains that Pennsylvania’s unique barn architecture is the result of a blending of different European building traditions in collective response to the topography of the region. Immigrants from Germany, Switzerland and the British Isles brought with them the barn construction techniques of their countries of origin, and adapted their designs to suit the landscape they encountered here. He identifies three primary barn types: the Royer-Nicodemus Barn (1790—1900) which were built into hillsides and have overhanging forebays; the Sweitzer or Swisser barn (1730—1850) which are crib-type barns built from logs with overbays and asymmetrical gables; and the Extended Pennsylvania barn, which are taller and wider barns built later in the 19th century with features of the first two types.

The York Springs structure that The Hudson Company recently salvaged was probably an Extended Pennsylvania barn. It has a forebay typical of the Royer-Nicodemus type, which allowed farmers to easily access both the basement and the levels above it. It also has an asymmetrical gable roof like a Sweitzer, so named for the barn Swiss design that likely inspired it. As farming technology improved and productivity increased in the mid-19th century, form followed function, and farmers built larger structures to accommodate livestock, feed, and equipment. The York Springs barn was three stories tall, and had high ceilings on its second level, with many intriguing features. Carved Roman numerals can be found on some of the beams—this may have been a technique for builders to note where each piece of lumber should go in the structure. The floors were built from wide planks. We refer to rustic wood that comes from the area where wheat was likely separated from the chaff as Oak Threshing. As it was deconstructed, the wood beams that supported the upper floor were exposed, revealing a complex, web-like system of interior struts. These are primarily hand-hewn White Oak, and tend to have wonderful characteristics and quirks like mortise holes and pockets. Now all that the wood has been salvaged in York Springs will become the foundational elements of homes and buildings across the United States, extending the life and reach of this centuries-old regional legacy, perhaps for generations to come.

RECLAIMED OAK THRESHING

RECLAIMED OAK THRESHING

HAND HEWN BEAMS

HAND HEWN BEAMS

The Hudson Company featured in the nyt

Elizabeth Roberts, and architect based in Brooklyn, NY., installed natural-looking white-oak flooring from The Hudson Company in the kitchen of a TriBeCa home.
Photo by Kyle Knodell

A house by Di Biase Filkoff Architects in Millbrook, NY., live-sawn white oak floors with plenty of character, from The Hudson Company. Photo by Gentl and Hyers.

In a farmhouse in Dutchess County, NY., Larson Architecture Works installed reclaimed heart-pine flooring from The Hudson Company. Photo by William Cole.

“The floor is the base upon which all other decisions are built.”

- Tim McKeough, NYT

A house by Roger Ferris and Partners in Bridgehampton, NY., has flat-sawn white oak floors by The Hudson Company. Photo by Gentl and Hyers.

Design writer and New York Times contributor, Tim McKeough, writes about the complex decisions that face renovators when it comes to choosing the right kind of hardwood flooring. The Hudson Company founder Jamie Hammel is quoted extensively in the piece, on the topics of grain appearance (“tiger stripes” and “cathedral pattern”), lumber grading, which classifies pieces of wood according to how many or few knots they have, the difference between solid and engineered wood, and the pros and cons of various finishes. 

The article will appear in the print edition of the New York Times on January 12th.

Read the full article here

The Story of American Chestnut

Until the beginning of the 20th century, American Chestnut trees—perhaps as many as 4 billion of them—swept across a vast region of the eastern United States like a sash. Their historic range could be traced from New England to Pennsylvania and Ohio, southwest across West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, and down to the northern parts of Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. Builders and furniture makers prized the straight-grained wood, which is rot-resistant, light, and easy to work with. Farmers harvested chestnuts each year to fatten up their livestock, and local wildlife fed on the mast. Chestnut wood is all around us: when it was plentiful, it was used to make railroad ties, houses, furniture, and musical instruments. Generations of Americans ate chestnuts themselves, as well as meat and dairy products from chestnut-fed animals.

Wild American chestnut trees growing in Western North Carolina.

Tanners used the bark’s natural tannins to cure their leather. For centuries, castanea dentata supported an entire regional ecosystem, particularly in Appalachia. In the Blue Ridge Mountains, the trees’ white catkins made the landscape look as though it had been blanketed by snow when they began to bloom each summer. Prior to European colonization, people from the Shawnee and Cherokee tribes mixed chestnuts—which are both starchy and high in protein—with corn to make bread. The black bear population feasted on chestnuts before hibernation, and sheltered under the trees. According to the American Chestnut Foundation, about 200 million acres between Maine and Mississippi were once covered by chestnut-dominated forests. But to see a living American Chestnut tree today, you’ll have to travel to northern Michigan to find the extreme edge of their historic range, or the American Chestnut Foundation’s research arbors. What happened to the American Chestnut tree? And why is its catastrophic demise it such a little-known story?

One reason might be that it occurred over a century ago, and the story has passed out of living memory. Changes in the way we live and eat mean that reliable, frost-resistant, productive trees are less important to the average American now than proximity to a good grocery store. And today, walking around midtown Manhattan during the holidays, chestnuts in little wax paper bags can be purchased from street vendors, who roast them so that their earthy fragrance fills the air. But the chestnuts that come from street vendors—immortalized though they may be by Nat King Cole’s “A Christmas Song”—are not American at all. They’re most likely imported from Italy, where the castanea sativa, or “sweet chestnut,” has been cultivated since Roman times. Chestnuts of various species are accessible to us today thanks to global trade. But our native castanea dentata population, along with the wood, bark, and nuts they produced, and the lifestyle and customs that grew up around it, were all but eradicated by the middle of the 20th century. And it started, of all places, in New York City.

Chestnut blight devastation photographed in 1943.

The fungus that would ultimately come to be known as the American Chestnut Blight was first documented in 1904 at the New York Zoological Park, now the Bronx Zoo. A forester at the park reported that an astonishing number of chestnut trees on the grounds were dying for no obvious reason. Research would later reveal that a pathogen called cryphonectria parasitica had arrived in North America with a group of Japanese Chestnut saplings around 1900. Asian chestnut trees had long been exposed to the fungus and were immune, but castanea dentata was defenseless. Trees began dying in New York and Pennsylvania. In 1910, a Southern Lumberman editorial made reference to "mysterious blight" that appeared to be affecting chestnut trees. Foresters in Pennsylvania began burning dead trees and spraying those that were infected but still appeared healthy, to no avail. By 1925, cryphonectria parasitica reached the Great Smoky Mountains. Appalachia was hit especially hard by the blight because the region was so rural. The populations of game animals like racoons, squirrels, grouse, and wild turkeys that had once fed on abundant chestnuts were now decimated, and the Great Depression was just a few years away. Now two important food sources, the chestnuts themselves and the animals they fed, were in peril.

The blight continued apace during World War II and the postwar era, in which processed, shelf-stable food flooded the American marketplace. Fewer and fewer families, even in rural areas, were self-sufficient, and more people were consuming store-bought food. It’s possible that even if the chestnut trees had survived, the shift in consumption habits would have steered people away from consuming chestnuts and the small game animals and livestock that had fed on them. Today, the only way to find chestnut wood in significant quantities is through salvage operations like ours. The Hudson Company is fortunate on occasion to find well-preserved 19th century barns in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland whose wood can be reclaimed and repurposed.

A Large Surviving American Chestnut Tree in Kentucky.

Drawing of a chestnut tree by James Fuller Queen.

Writing in The American Chestnut: the Life, Death and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, Susan Freinkel notes that chestnut was often used in concert with other hardwoods like oak, cherry, or black walnut. The finest 18th and 19th century American furniture you’ll encounter in great collections like those at the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, contains many chests, desks, tables and chairs made primarily from mahogany, walnut, poplar or cherry, with pieces of chestnut used strategically in various places for support. In furniture, chestnut tended to be a supporting player, but as timber, it was unmatched. 

Some chestnut wood is described as “wormy” chestnut, which would seem to belie the trees’ imperviousness to insects. But wormy chestnut has a very particular origin: when trees began to die during the blight but were still upright, the larvae of the chestnut timber borer beetle made its way through the wood. When that wood was salvaged, it appeared to have holes and lines throughout, which initially made it undesirable. But as the Colonial Revival movement gained popularity in the 1940’s and ‘50s, wormy chestnut became fashionable as a wood for furniture, floors and trim for people seeking a distinctive rustic look.

Reclaimed Chestnut Kitchen Island.

Reclaimed Chestnut from The Hudson Company

Reclaimed Wormy Chestnut Writing Desk.

For those who love the American Chestnut and want to see the trees flourish again, genetic engineering holds great promise. Founded in 1983 by three botanists, the American Chestnut Foundation, based in Asheville, North Carolina, now has chapters in 16 states. The ACF’s mission is to use genetics to try to give American Chestnut trees some of the immunity of Chinese chestnut trees through cross-breeding. With each generation, additional crosses increase the amount of Chinese chestnut DNA in the American trees, which scientists hope will give these “perfect trees” a fighting chance.

Reclaimed Chestnut Herringbone Flooring by The Hudson Company.

Protecting Your Floors This Winter

Protecting Your Wood Floors

As the dry winter months approach, we’d like to remind all our friends, clients, and partners of the importance of monitoring the environmental conditions in your home, office, and retail spaces.

The natural expansion and contraction of wood caused by insufficient or excessive relative humidity levels can affect your wood floors.  This winter, we encourage you to monitor the conditions of your space to maintain a comfortable environment. 

Here are a few easy ways to protect and maintain your floors:

1. Purchase a digital hygrometer.

2. Maintain an interior temperature between 60 - 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

3. Maintain an interior relative humidity of 35 - 55%,
   

For more information, please visit www.nwfa.org or contact The Hudson Company directly. 

INSTALLATION IN FOCUS: DOWNTOWN IN COLOR BY HALLIDAY GREER, 8th STREET, MANHATTAN

Interior design by Halliday Greer, Capella, Flat Sawn flooring by The Hudson Company, Photo by Annie Schlechter

Interior and architectural designers Andrew Halliday and David Greer focused on chroma and pattern while thinking about their design for this bright and color bathed residential renovation in lower Manhattan.

Early in the process, the designers and owners were aligned in wanting to use a light colored floor to amplify the brightness of the space without competing with the rest of the colorful elements of the interior. They selected Capella, Flat Sawn White Oak Select Grade flooring for the project. “We wanted something light, neutral and airy so that it didn’t ever feel dark or too heavy…a clean and contemporary envelope that didn’t compete with the deep colors and patterns on the walls,” said Halliday.  “We think it looks terrific.”

Photo by Annie Schlechter, Typographic art by Russell Maret

Photo by Annie Schlechter

The entryway paneling is painted a deep teal blue and creates a wonderful arrival that opens up into the rest of the bright apartment.  Bold patterned wallpapers were integrated with other graphic elements to create an environment that truly represented the owners themselves.  Russell Maret, a type designer and family member, provided some of his typographic artwork, which adorn the walls with color and symmetry. 

“Working with The Hudson Company was a terrific and seamless process,” commented Halliday, “we will use their floors many many times in the future.”

Photo by Annie Schlechter