Burls, whorls, knots, spalting \u2014 the creations of Reid Harris, co-owner of Northern Edge Craftworks, highlight a story unique to each tree he hand-crafts into a table, a bench, or another piece of furniture.<\/p>\n
Many of Harris\u2019 creations showcase what\u2019s called the tree\u2019s live edge \u2014 the natural line where the outer bark removed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a lot of work,\u201d Harris said. \u201cIt has to be hand sanded, hand finished.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also, however, \u201calive, organic and unique\u201d \u2014 something that, in a video on his website, Harris says is closer to interpreting wood than crafting it.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, Harris made a table for himself out of a scrap of wood he got from a friend\u2019s shop. Encouraged by friends who wanted something like it for themselves, he incorporated his business, Northern Edge Craftworks, 18 months ago.<\/p>\n
Heather Harris, Reid Harris\u2019 sister, is co-owner of the company and an artist in her own right.<\/p>\n
Reid Harris has worked with wood since high school, and he remembers being a kid wowed by his dad\u2019s chainsaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018This is like a light saber for trees; it\u2019s absolutely amazing,\u2019\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cEver since, I just had a passion for working with wood and trees, and I spend a lot of time outside and walking around the forest or skiing, so I spend a lot of time staring at trees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything that goes into the furniture at Northern Edge Craftworks is as local as Harris can keep it. So far, he\u2019s gotten all his wood \u2014 red alder, red cedar, yellow cedar, Sitka spruce \u2014 from Icy Strait Lumber in Hoonah. Owner Wes Tyler gives him the exact coordinates of each tree harvested, and Harris marks those coordinates on the underside of each piece of furniture. (He also writes the name of the piece and the number; he\u2019s created 28 pieces so far.)<\/p>\n
Some of those pieces are at other Juneau entrepreneurs\u2019 businesses: he has work at Kindred Post; Amalga Distillery has ordered a big counter; Rainforest Farms, the marijuana depot in downtown Juneau, wants a counter; he\u2019s making an 18-foot-long shelf for Brendan Sullivan\u2019s salon, Salon Cedar. He also works with other entrepreneurs: Adam Dimmitt of local shop Adam\u2019s Bent Metal makes most of the legs for Harris\u2019 tables and benches using a CNC plasma cutter.<\/p>\n
In the future, Harris hopes to increase production, but keep his business in Alaska, using local wood. (In addition to owning Northern Edge Craftworks, Harris works as staff at the legislature. It\u2019s when the legislature\u2019s not in session that he works on his craft full-time.) Because each piece is unique, he doesn\u2019t anticipate ever doing massive orders of identical pieces, but ideally he\u2019d like to have some employees and to create a few hundred pieces each year.<\/p>\n
So far, much of his work has been commissioned. Sometimes people want traditional shapes, but still the live edge aspect; for that, Harris might cut the piece down the middle and turn the edge inside, as with a table on display at The Canvas at REACH, where Northern Edge Craftworks is displaying this month, with the symmetrically mirrored live edges centered throughout the table and covered in glass.<\/p>\n
Working with live edge and unique pieces of wood takes time. Just under the bark of a tree is a vertical, differently colored strip of wood, and the outer edge can be a silvery-grayish color reminiscent of weathered beach towns.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t get upset if a piece of wood cracks, he said, instead focusing on the beauty that anomalies create, pulling them back together with hand-chiseled bow tie splines.<\/p>\n
\u201cNorthern Edge Craftworks offers an amazing story, and I think that\u2019s part of its appeal,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I build a table\u2026 this is something your grandchildren can have. I\u2019m interested in things that (outlast) our own lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Northern Edge Craftworks\u2019 show will be up at the Canvas until July 26.<\/p>\n
Northern Edge Craftworks\u2019 website is www.northernedgecraftworks.com; its Facebook page is https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/1539055613024097\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Burls, whorls, knots, spalting \u2014 the creations of Reid Harris, co-owner of Northern Edge Craftworks, highlight a story unique to each tree he hand-crafts into a table, a bench, or another piece of furniture. Many of Harris\u2019 creations showcase what\u2019s called the tree\u2019s live edge \u2014 the natural line where the outer bark removed. \u201cIt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":26703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26702"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}