Organic wood (the gazette)

• Organic wood (the gazette)

Furniture from 'organic' wood from fallen trees Wood found in tropical forests has colours and grains that inspire whimsical designs By SUZANNE WEXLER, The GazetteJanuary 22, 2011 Organic wood, a.k.a. reclaimed or found wood, is typically collected from fallen trees along various riverbanks in Thailand. Some of it is more than 200 years old, and the bark has aged with elaborate nooks and grooves, which flatter the already two-tone tropical wood. It makes very distinct tables, benches and more. Shimon Finkelstein, owner of Artemano, a furniture store on St. Laurent Blvd., talks about the concept. I've heard of recycled wood -but what exactly is organic wood? Yes, there are two things. Recycled wood is any wood that was something in a past life and converted into something new in this life. It could have been a house that was taken apart and then something like a cabinet was made afterward. With organic wood, the source is nature -trunks of trees that are lying on riverbanks, or sometimes they're dug out of the sand. Then the wood is taken out, dried in a kiln over four to six weeks, cut and made into a bench, a table or into any other furniture. So no tree was cut down in the process of finding the wood in the pieces here? Well, I don't want to stand behind it 100 per cent because I didn't see what they were doing with all of the pieces -but the majority of what we're selling at the store I selected when I went there. To the riverbanks in India? No, in Thailand. I go with the supplier to the riverbank. I pick the furniture in its raw form, and I say, "You know what, I really like this one because I see the grains." When I can see the grain on the facade, I know the same grain goes throughout the trunk of a tree. Then I'll say, "I'd love to have a table, a console or a bench made from this." (The supplier) has a factory and also models in his showroom. From the stocks of logs that I buy, we decide what to create. Why can't you do this with found oak or maple pieces from North America? You could, but it's a boring wood. It doesn't have the beauty of an exotic wood (found in tropical areas). Exotic wood has two colours of grain. It's as if an artist created it. If you look at the grains, there are pictures in it; it's a whole story in there. For me, since I love photography, and I take a lot of macro photography, when I look at this wood here -the way that it's cut -I can almost see a face with a nose, with an eye. When I look inside the grooves, the cracks and the holes, there's this beauty in it. It's nature's creation. How does being found or recycled add to the beauty of these pieces? It adds principle. If I could furnish my entire store with recycled and river-found logs of wood, I would do it. But it's a process. It's a long process. The awareness in Thailand, in India, in Indonesia is much more than it used to be, though. Not because they're so crazy about helping the environment, but because it sells. So that's already an encouraging sign. But to me, there's a beauty in taking something that's old and bringing it back to life. I wish they could do it with people. When did you first discover found wood? Three years ago I bought petrified wood in Jakarta, Indonesia. But it's been saturated and has become kind of like cement. It's just too heavy and not feasible to bring it into a house or an apartment here. Petrified wood opened my eyes to how much beauty there was in wood that was already there. You don't need to cut down a tree; you don't need to make something new. Trees are scarce; they're not going to last forever. And going this route (of organic wood) is also good business. You're helping the environment on the way, but there are almost endless options. Any riverbank-- there are tons of them. You can find trees everywhere. Petrified wood is a much older and heavier wood that was once submerged and preserved in sediment such as volcanic ash. When infused with minerals as a result of water or mud from the earth, this type of wood can turn into a stone similar to quartz. Many of the oldest petrified forests throughout the world are protected. Petrified wood found in the Black Forest Bed in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona has an estimated age of 2.3 million years, according to the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Finkelstein estimates a console piece from petrified wood can weigh about 200 to 250 kilograms. A table made from riverbank wood typicallyweighsabout80kg. Becauseof its weight, Finkelstein stopped selling petrified wood. Artemano, 4238 St. Laurent Blvd., 514-439-9335. Locations also in Laval and Brossard; artemano.ca © Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette