Our co-workers in the Catskills have been as busy as bees! They have just finished building a new ClearSpan building to store our JOHNHOUSHMAND reclaimed wood slabs. A year ago, a snowfall of an impressive 54 inches caused the roof of one of our smaller slab storage units to collapse. Our entire slab inventory, which consists of thousands, needed to be combined into one cramped center with slab piles stacked at nearly 8 to 10 feet high!
This new building will almost double the storage space we currently have, with an additional benefit: to air-dry slabs in order to shorten kiln-drying time. During a Catskills summer, the heat from the sun on the fabric roof of the building combined with the breeze from open doors allows the slabs to dry quickly yet evenly. We are thrilled that this process will reduce the energy needed to make our beautiful tables, thus making an organic product even greener!
The ClearSpan building is made of galvanized steel frames and a fabric roofing cover. It measures 195 feet long, 55 feet wide, and 22 feet high. Definitely a great sized space to comfortably house our precious organic slabs!
JOHNHOUSHMAND is excited to welcome a new addition to our team: Max Domingo Hidalgo!
Max comes to us from Vitra with over nine years of professional Interior Design experience and a robust background in the history of architecture and design, acquired at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Munich.
His extensive knowledge of – and love for – design is matched only by his wit and charm (see image below). Max is always quick with a joke or a story, especially one regarding his “daughter” Goldie – a prize chihuahua who is fond of wearing pearls and fashionable hats.
Max is currently representing the JOHNHOUSHMAND line at our West Hollywood location in the Pacific Design Center (PDC). So, if you are are in California and need some information on our work, a sophisticated party buddy, or a complete history of design (inclusive of juicy personal tid-bits on the great design houses) stop by the PDC and meet Max!
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!)
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….
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….
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….!
Not content to receive nature’s blessings, we have decided to push the envelope…. Originally conceived as part of our “Retaliation Collection” (more about that later…), we have taken a selection of extraordinary slabs of wood, and made molds from them, casting them into aluminum slabs. With all the cool beauty of white metals, and the intense living information of the highly character starting slabs, these pieces merit extreme attention. They can also be shaped and folded into standing pieces, book-matched, mixed and matched, and more.
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.
At John Houshmand we like all sorts of toys including Dozuki saws, belt sanders, high-speed drills, huge chainsaws and other dangerous stuff that allows us to make our creations. But we also love digital MP3 recorders, hi-def video cameras, Twitter, Flip video recorders, Adobe Lightroom, Camera Raw and any other technology that helps us tell a good story through multimedia presentations including video and audio slideshows. Click on the image above to see and hear all about our humble beginnings and some of the wild stuff we have been doing lately.
At John Houshmand, we believe in getting out of the office – way out. That’s why, in addition to our New York showroom in SOHO, and our state-of-the-art workshop in the Catskills of upstate, we also have a marvelous hideout called Tierra Adentro in Mexico. Located just seven miles north of the famous artist enclave of San Miguel de Allende, the house was designed by architect David Howell and it’s one of our favorite places to dream-up new furniture designs. The house is always available for rent when we are not using it. You can find out more about it here.
