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Saturday, January 25, 2003

By Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

To a developer leveling a small orchard outside Gettysburg, firewood was the only good use for the hundreds of apple trees he'd yanked from the earth.

	A hickory twig chandelier made by Deanna Wish lights the great room of Doug and Leslie Kittenbrink's Ohio Township home. (Bill Wade, Post-Gazette) Reid Crosby can be reached at 724-834-7878. You can view his natural form furniture at http://www.branchandburl.com. Deanna Wish's hickory twig chandeliers and furniture can be viewed at http://www.deannawish.com You can contact her at 724-598-7793.

But to furniture maker Reid Crosby, the 50-year-old trees were a thing of beauty -- and the raw material he needed to create art. The 35-year-old Ohio native can take an awkward-looking piece of wood -- like the trunks of two of those apple trees -- and make something pretty darn spectacular. In this case, it's the base for an 11-foot table for a Fox Chapel couple.

In the eight years since he started building natural form furnishings out of tree stumps, burls and giants slabs of curly maple, virgin red oak, and other indigenous woods, Crosby has developed a deep love for wood in its raw form.

"It's so beautiful and unique," he says.

Deanna Wish, a New Kensington-based designer of home furnishings and accessories, knows just what he means.

In the late '70s, when the country movement was taking just off, Wish was one of the first designers in the area to offer rustic twig furniture. Almost immediately, her collection of beds, chairs and benches, crafted from hickory branches by the Amish, were a hit.

"We were right at the forefront," she says.

The furniture sold well but Wish soon felt the urge to once again create something on the cutting edge. So 11 years ago, she added a line of chandeliers and wall sconces fashioned out of those same hickory branches.

"My goal was to make a lighting fixture that looked like it was plucked right out of the woods," she says, laughing, recalling the quizzical looks of fellow designers when they saw her first prototypes.

Wish, however, knew what she was doing. Eventually, the "brancheliers" were not only part of "vignettes" in Calico Corners fabric stores all across the country but they were also brightening hotel lobbies and restaurants.

As both artisans' success makes clear, furnishings made from natural materials have never been more popular. But while they once graced only vacation homes, hunting lodges or backwoods cabins, they're now finding their way into more traditional dwellings.

For a client's vacation home near Ligonier, Reid Crosby made a 12-foot white oak table and 10 ironwood chairs. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)

"They're very natural, yet so artistic," says Leslie Kittenbrink, who, after seeing Wish's display at the Log Home & Timber Frame Expo last year, bought two for her contemporary cedar home in Ohio Township. Kittenbrink and her husband had originally considered antler chandeliers, but "we're not really animal people," she says. Wish's lighting fixture -- which in 2001 won a platinum Award for Design Excellence -- had a certain flow.

A 24-inch, four-candle chandelier graces the dining room while a 36-inch, 10-candle fixture hangs between the exposed timber beams in the stone-and-cedar living room.

"It's such a perfect fit," says Kittenbrink.

While the chandeliers look very simple, there's nothing easy about putting them together. Hickory branches harvested from Mercer and Lawrence counties are steamed and bent in a "J" shape, then glued and screwed onto a pine frame (the wiring is concealed in brown leather sleeves). The plastic candle caps that will eventually hold the silicon-dipped light bulbs are covered with sawdust and sprayed with paint to given them color and texture. A twigger then carefully screws onto the frame dozens of "arms" made from branches.

"It's a magical product," says Wish. "You look at it and say, how on earth is that done?"

Price is determined both by the size of the light and the number of candles. A 20-inch, four-candle chandelier, for instance, runs about $400, while a 36-inch, six-candle fixture will cost about $900. One of Wish's most popular models, the 36-inch wide, 48-inch-tall Bryce Andrew, costs $1,800 and features 14 candles on three tiers.

Crosby's one-of-a-kind creations are equally labor-intensive. Because each piece of wood is unique, he can't work from patterns. So it can take anywhere from a few months to more than a year to build one of his pieces in his horse stable-turned-studio on a 20-acre farm near Greensburg.

His biggest challenge is often in obtaining wood, which he prefers have a native link to Pennsylvania. Very few lumber yards carry the types of raw materials he works with, so Crosby -- who has taught at Great Camp Sagamore in the Adirondacks and will soon offer a course locally -- must be an opportunist.

While many clients provide wood from their own properties, that isn't always the case. That means sometimes going into the woods and cutting down a tree himself (he has, from time to time, gone to the local courthouse to identify property owners) as well as developing relationships with loggers.

The self-taught craftsman also occasionally buys slabs from places as far away as California, like a giant piece of burled cherry with curly crotch grain and bark inclusions he got from an urban logger in Los Angeles.

"It's a matter of letting people know what you're looking for," he says.

The tree stumps Crosby regularly incorporates into his exquisite designs pose particular problems. Occasionally, he lucks out and finds an exposed trunk along a creek bed or lying in the woods. But for the most part, they're still deep in the ground when Crosby identifies them as having potential has them exhumed by a professional excavator.

Tree burls -- those hard, knotty growths on the sides of some trees -- are especially exciting to work with because you never know what one is going to look like until you slice it open, "and it can be really stunning," says Crosby.

After the wood has been harvested and cut to size, it is dried in one of two kilns to kill any bugs. Then, if the client prefers a less rustic look, the bark is carefully peeled off.

Because he likes a contrast, Crosby will often mix a darker wood like ironwood with something lighter, like curly maple. The slightly curved table he built for Pam Rollings and Neal Brendel's Fox Chapel dining room, for instance, features a wormy chestnut top on those two peeled apple tree stumps.

He very rarely uses nails, preferring instead mortise-and-tenon joinery. Stain, which masks the natural beauty of the wood, is another no-no. Occasionally, he has to build a steel frame to support the weight of the wood. Once completed, the wood is oiled or lacquered.

Because he's working with natural materials, nothing is a given. To get it plumb, for instance, a piece of wood must sometimes be hung from a hook in the ceiling. And what looks good when it's standing in the woods will often disappoint after it's been cut in the studio.

"It's flying by the seat of your pants," he says.

	Reid Crosby says he produces not only a high-quality, well-built piece of furniture that will last for generations but also a unique piece of art, such as this king-sized peeled maple bed in a Ligonier-area home. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)

Though a few of his pieces are for sale at Mountain Dreams International in Shadyside, Crosby keeps no real inventory; most everything is built on commission.

Based on how long it takes to craft the piece and how unique the wood is, a single-base table starts at about $3,000, a simple coffee table at about $400 and chairs $500 to $2,000 apiece.

A king-sized peeled maple bed he created for a client in the Ligonier Valley cost about $5,000; a 12-foot white oak table with knee braces, notched corners and inlaid Roman numerals ran close to $9,000 while the 10 ironwood chairs and wormy chestnut seats cost about $1,500 each.

But what you get, says Crosby, is not only a high-quality, well-built piece of furniture that will last for generations but a unique piece of art.

"Anyone can build a clunky orphan," he says. "But if you do it well, it's an artistic pursuit."

While his main focus is on furniture, Crosby also creates architectural pieces, such as stair rails, burled or hewn fireplace mantels, vanities and built-in tables. Some of his slabs, for instance, are simply sanded and lacquered and then hung as artwork.

He has also undertaken several larger, world-class projects. The magnificent 32-foot-long, 4,000-pound bar top gracing the Seasons restaurant at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort & Spa in Farmington, for instance, is his handiwork. Crafted from a single slab of red oak, this one-of-a-kind piece took four months to build.

"Hopefully I'm building a legacy, creating something that will stand the test of time," he says.