Furniture designers push to make products out of urban trees

Jess Wangsness

With the rampant spread of the emerald ash borer, a beetle that destroys trees, millions of trees nationwide in urban areas could end up being turned into woodchips and firewood.

But there are some furniture designers who believe those urban trees that are infected by the emerald ash borer don’t have to have such a sad fate; they could be turned into furniture.

In an effort to raise awareness about the affects of the emerald ash borer — particularly among architects and interior designers who significantly influence furniture trends — “Rising from Ashes: Furniture from Lost Trees,” a traveling exhibit, showcases 29 furniture pieces crafted from various parts of the ash tree.

With support from the Chicago Furniture Designers’ Association, the Illinois Arborist Association and The Morton Arboretum, among a host of others, the exhibit will run from Dec. 4 through Feb. 28 at the Chicago Center for Green Technology.

Ranging in style from modern to whimsical, the furniture selected for the exhibit reflects the enormous potential of ash wood, which many artisans admire for its variety of hues, effortless absorption of stains and a certain malleable yet resistant quality that has historically made it an ideal choice for sporting equipment such as bats and tennis rackets.

The emerald ash borer will force 20 percent of the trees in Chicago and 130 million trees in Illinois to come down, according to Bruce Horigan, a CFDA member and co-owner of Horigan Urban Forest Products, a hardwood sawmill in Skokie, IL, that specializes in transforming urban trees into useable lumber.

“Putting that into perspective, one out of every five trees will be chopped down. That’s a lot of wood that communities are attached to,” Horigan said.

The emerald ash borer is thought to have arrived in the United States from Asia in the 1990s, but the beetle wasn’t actually discovered until 2002 in southeastern Michigan. The adult beetles lay their eggs just under the tree’s bark, and when the larvae hatch, they feed on the inner layer of the wood until the tree eventually dies. Dolly Spragins, a furniture designer who is co-chairing the exhibit, said the ash tree fails to show symptoms of disease for two or three years, a problem that has increased infestation since transporters do not always know that the wood they shuttle across state lines is already infected.

Even though infestations are concentrated in the Midwest, the nationwide spread of the beetle will eventually eliminate 20 percent of the country’s hardwood trees. If current state and federal containment policies — which prevent the wood from traveling out-of-state — are relaxed, then lumber mills will be freed up to move enough logs to supply manufacturers with an abundance of ash wood.

“The bug only burrows a quarter of an inch through the tree, and in the normal logging process, that part comes off anyway,” Spragins says. “So there are no wormholes or rot to keep people from using it.”

According to USDA Forest Service product specialist Stephen M. Bratkovich, demand for American wood exceeds current growth on commercial U.S. forestlands, a phenomenon that could be alleviated if manufacturers used more municipal trees for furniture, flooring and paper products. Furthermore, if urban trees were used for lumber instead of mulch, the costs of cutting down municipal trees could be reduced.

“Urban trees are grown in places where you want low-branching, and this causes more knots in the wood,” Horigan remarks. “And yet the knots add character; that’s why a lot of artisans love it. But using urban lumber has a major sustainability benefit for large furniture retailers. So if those companies have any green initiatives, then I think this is it for them.”

As part of the educational outreach attached to the exhibit, both Horigan and Spragins plan to participate in an upcoming lecture, “Considering Ash,” on Feb. 10 at the Chicago Center for Green Technology. Horigan and Spragins, along with John Kriegshauser, a designer and professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Laureen Blissard, of the U.S. Green Building Council, will discuss using ash wood as a design choice and the prospect of gaining LEED credits from the use of urban harvested wood.

Once the exhibit closes in February, Horigan and Spragins hope that architects, interior designers and consumers will start to think of urban wood when they buy a dining room table.

“To create that circle of recycling, we want people to ask, ‘Can I use urban lumber?’” Horigan says. “Because until people ask that question, urban wood won’t catch on. It’s the same thing with recycling: Until you buy recycled content items, the world doesn’t benefit from it. In the end, that’s what completes the loop.”

Taken from http://furniturestyle.com/