How to Talk Like John

Playing With Marbles

· Asides, How to Talk Like John, Uncategorized · ,

Every so often I get a hankering to bring in some new materials to work with and when it’s stone, there’s nothing quite like marble… Man has been using marble since the day he figured out how to cut and shape rock to do his bidding. I had some ideas on how it could do mine.

So you would think that The World’s Largest Marble Quarry would be in Italy (I’ve been to Carrara and Pietrasanta…. Driving up the coast road I thought that was snow in them thar hills until….) or in some other far flung place.

But it turns out it’s a bit more than two hours from the ranch in nearby Danby, Vermont. I had to go there and see for myself. It helped that a project in Singapore for the W Hotel chain wanted some boulders with polished faces.

JOHNHOUSHMAND - Marble They just don’t allow you in the quarry to kick some stones, especially if you’re looking to buy a few small boulders. But a few calls to the owner of the company (who became a fan of our work) and a bit of expansive discussion, and I got an invite, a tour, and a chance to pick out some large chunks.

I wandered up and down the quarry roads, peeking around piles of blocks, scree, and precariously balanced 20 ton hunks of scrap, looking for the perfect shape. This was a dream unlike any I’ve had. I have toured the Italian stoneyards, been to Crab Orchard Tennessee with Vicente Wolf, and selected limestone in Oaxaca for Edgar Bronfman’s bathroom… but this was a mother lode, literally. We need to know more, see more, understand more. Mike the quarry manager, who was one of the most genuine humans I’ve ever met jumped me into his pickup, we veered around the John Deere block loader (capacity 80,000 pounds) and headed underground into 40 acres of subterranean stone cutting operations.

JOHNHOUSHMAND - Marble

There are quarries up and down the hills, and then there is the cave, manmade, hollowed out over a century of excavating, and with miles of roads, “rooms”, trucks, pools of wastewater reclamation, mountains of scrap and slabs, and spray painted signs reminding one of “EXIT,” in case you needed to get some air. 45 degrees year round.

Visions of marble blocks, slabs, boulders, sculptures last night. All night. Going back. ASAP. Have a plan….

Singularly-harvested with Love

· How to Talk Like John, Tree Travels, Uncategorized · , , , , , ,

A lot of people ask us about where we get our beautiful slabs of wood, and the answer really is all around.  At JOHNHOUSHMAND we don’t harvest wood for our furniture but instead utilize trees that have been felled or damaged by storms, need to be cut down due to safety or otherwise.  Hobart, New York really has become John Houshmand’s home and so he is on a first name basis with numerous members of the Catskill community who let him know if they know of any trees that need to be removed.

JOHNHOUSHMAND

It’s inspiring to see every part of the process from helping out another in the community, to having some fun climbing the trees, to starting to the create the custom-made furniture that we love to produce.

JOHNHOUSHMAND

Hyatt Regency Atlanta Front Desk

· How to Talk Like John, Uncategorized, Video · , , , , , ,

The Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, Georgia, originally designed by Atlanta architect John Portman in 1967, is undergoing a transformation. This award-winning luxury hotel was the first contemporary atrium hotel in the world and at the time of opening was the tallest building in Atlanta.

JOHNHOUSHMAND, in conjunction with tvsdesign, a design firm specializing in architectural, interior, sustainable and urban design, had the pleasure of designing the two-fold black walnut bell and reception desks, black walnut console tables with glass legs, and valet stand at the Hyatt Regency.

We Had Some Snow….

· Events, How to Talk Like John, News, Our History

Working in the north country can be a challenge in the depth of winter…. Last week’s snowstorm made for some interesting scenes….
(Needless to say, we all missed a day of work!)

EXPERT CHAINSAW CRAFTSMAN

· Audio Slideshows, Features, Furniture Designs, How to Talk Like John, Our History, Tree Travels

Working with our friends in Nicaragua, we used an expert chainsaw craftsman to carve a dished tabletop, carefully arc-cutting the back to create an elegant shape from an otherwise cumbersome tree section….

Grand Canyon Table

· Audio Slideshows, Features, Furniture Designs, How to Talk Like John, News, Our History, Video

After hoisting the components of this mammoth table up to a NYC Park Ave apartment on the roof of the elevator, the piece was assembled in situ. Engineered to come apart and back together perfectly, pitons and all, the finished piece is astounding for its design, elegance, craftsmanship, and engineering….

The Search for Unique Woods

· Audio Slideshows, How to Talk Like John, Our History, Tree Travels, Video


Unique logs are hard to find, hard to acquire responsibly, hard to take down, hard to truck, and generally a serious logistical challenge. But when the wood Santa arrives, it is so very worth it. Here two large black walnuts on the doorstep after a trip cross country. They were sourced from a homeowner who needed to take them down for a new home construction on a tiny lot. Save….!

WORLD’S LARGEST BLACK WALNUT SLABS

· Features, How to Talk Like John, News, Our History, Tree Travels

Sometimes the cycle of life is writ so large it makes your eyes pop… High in the Pacific Northwest a mammoth tree went into decline. Having lived at the confluence of two rivers, it grew to astounding proportions. The takedown history, and the resulting slabs, are also of astounding proportions. Each slab measuring 8′ WIDE by 10′ long, a book-matched pair will give you a 20′ long table fit for a palace, a government center, or a conference room without equal on the planet.

Just What the Heck is “Solid Character-Grade” Wood Anyway?

· How to Talk Like John · , ,

character_grade_woodThe industrial process of harvesting trees for wood products has become such a specialized method that only a very small percentage of trees are deemed usable. They must fit into a matrix that includes such considerations as log size, hardness, color and grain structure and aesthetics, mill-ability, weight, and more. As most wood products are now engineered, the logs must be veneer-capable…in other words they must fit on a rotary or sequential slicer that filets or ribbons off the log a cardboard-thin skin capable of being handled by specific machinery, means, and methods.

As such, anything too large, irregular, crotched, unique, and different cannot pass through the industrial process. What IS used is a banal cartoon of the world of wood…perfectly straight grain, homogenized, devoid of knots, inclusions, imperfections. Although they intend to be prime grade A materials, they actually lack all the visual character and information that is the birthright of a real tree. That world includes a visual, informational, and vibratory history of all aspects of a tree’s life, including its species characteristics as well as its individual lifetime, where it lived, climate, soil, sunlight, water conditions, historical events, traumas, boom times and more…the “terroir” of a tree.

Trees that are not compliant with the industry’s tooling and marketing demands are more often than not destined for land fill and firewood. Shocking to consider that a 250 year old hardwood sage would be cut into firewood rather than carefully milled out and allowed to tell its story. And to remind humanity that wood does NOT look like wallpaper, but rather a map of time, life, existence, and the unique trajectory of witnessing and participating in reality.