Fine Pine Design: Modern Wooden Desk with a Charred Black Exterior

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Taking inspiration from the beautiful simplicity of pine and its ability to be adapted to modern aesthetics, Note Design Studio teamed up with cabinet maker Karolina Stenfelt to create a minimalist desk that meets the needs of today’s architects and designers. A slim pine box perched on a steel frame, the desk features layers of veneer laid out in a fish bone pattern and charred to a pitch black finish on the outside.

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This veneer is paired with pine lumber to create a work surface and storage system full of unexpected details. Flip open the top to access the smooth herringbone desktop, bordered on one side with a built-in brass ruler. On the other side, USB and power outlets make it easy to keep your laptop, phone and other gadgets charged while you work.

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Nesting drawers slide open to reveal subdivided storage space for pens and small objects, and when the desk is closed, a custom-made brass lock secures its contents. Charring the exterior was a bit of an experiment, the designers reveal; “Pine is a rather soft material and the charring was hopefully going to give the wood a hardened surface,” they say. “There is no approved technique for charring pine veneer and especially nothing proven to create and conform to the intricate intarsia pattern that covers the desk.”

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Looks like the experiment paid off – the way the blackened exterior contrasts with the golden pine interior really sets off the creaminess of the wood and the pattern of the veneer.

Eastern White Pine Shines: WunderWoods Custom Woodworking

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What makes Eastern White Pine such an ideal choice for woodworking? Craftsman Scott Wunder, owner of WunderWoods Custom Woodworking in St. Louis, Missouri, gives us a few reasons in the form of gorgeous hollow beams, dark-stained tables made for a brewing company, custom shelving and other projects. As one of the tallest and largest trees used for wood projects, with trunk circumferences often passing fifteen feet, it fits the bill when large slabs of wood are needed, with a little extra pliability and smooth texture to boot.

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Wunder shows off just how big Eastern White Pine can get in a photo showing an unusually-shaped trunk, which was trimmed down to 60 inches wide to fit in a Lucas mill for processing. One commission involved a series of long, wide tables milled for Goebel & Co. Furniture, which ultimately ended up at Urban Chestnut Brewing Company. Another required a bunch of new pine lids to be created for vintage wine boxes, to be displayed on hand-hewn pine shelving in a wine cellar.

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Says Wunder, “Pine is the perfect choice for anything with a rustic feel because it can easily be worked with hand tools, distressed with minimal effort and is naturally rustic in feel with the characteristic knot patterns. But, white pine isn’t always knotty. The big logs can produce completely clear lumber for projects with a more modern look, and even smaller logs can produce clear lumber between the knots, which can be used for smaller projects.”

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“White pine is also fantastic for woodwork hat needs to stay straight, like interior doors, because of the trees normally straight up growth pattern which produces consistently stable lumber. I have built many doors with white pine, and I love knowing that the doors will stay very straight.”

A notable bonus? “The wood smells great and leaves my shop smelling fresh and clean.”

Stackable Pine Blocks Make Modular Furniture Designs Fun

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Like a toy specifically made for adults, this interactive set of modular pine blocks lets you create display compositions specifically tailored to your space. The ROOM Collection by Erik Olovsson & Kyuhyung Cho consists of a series of square and rectangular wooden components with cut-outs in a variety of shapes. You simply stack them however you like, filling the niches with anything from books to bottles of wine.

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This unique approach to shelving eliminates the fixed nature of bookshelves, not only making it easy to create a storage system that fits whatever available space you might have in a room, but also turning you into a designer yourself. You become a curator of your own objects, finding ways to perfectly frame everything you want to show off.

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Even ordinary things like tea cups, writing implements, shoes and cameras become art when they’re placed within one of these oval, hexagonal or house-shaped niches. The set is a cool, modern twist on more conventional pine furniture.

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“When it comes to furniture, people are used to placing an object within a square space,” say the designers. “While it is common to use a square form to arrange an object, Erik and Kyuhyung were interested in diversifying the relationship between object and space to create furniture as rooms for objects. The focus was to explore the mix-and-match quality of the ensemble in our spaces from a graphical approach.”

This Week in Wood: Amazing Arboreous Bench is a Work of Art

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When is a bench not just a bench? When it’s also a stunning sculptural work, blurring the lines between functional furniture and art. ‘Arboreous’ by Rota Lab is another great example of wood being used in unexpected ways, with the adaptability and beauty of the material taking center stage.

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Installed in the apartment of a client, the bench was custom-made for the space, offering a place to take a seat in the foyer. Branch-like appendages seem to grow organically from the slats of the bench, crawling up the wall, curving into a corner and stretching up into a skylight.

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The customer asked for a piece inspired by Pablo Reinoso’s Spaghetti Bench series in which the wooden or steel slats of a seat flow off to one side as if they have a life of their own.

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According to the designers, the bench “required two months of intense experimentation on wood bending and one month to build and assemble it.”

Wood Innovations: New Veneer Can Be Sewn Like Fabric

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This quilted material isn’t fabric that’s printed to look like wood – it’s actual wood veneer. The innovative new invention from Berlin-based designers Anastasiya Koshcheeva and Oya-Meryem Yanik is soft enough to be joined with thread rather than glue, and can be used alone or in conjunction with plywood.

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The material is called ‘Chester’ and it’s more than just a decorative finish for products like the stool pictured above. The quilting method of joining the layers of soft, moldable plywood creates a cushioned surface.

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The resulting product can be cut to size and has potential for use in the furniture, transportation and industrial industries. It’s an interesting new way to look at wood, a product generally perceived as being very solid and inflexible, potentially opening up a whole new realm of possibilities for the material.

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“I explore each material’s unique potential, aesthetic features, and haptic qualities in an experimental way and turn my insights into design concepts,” says Koshcheeva. “My work is characterized by the combination of contrasting textures, colors, and skills. I create products with character that have a story and tell it through the design.”

Bostonwood: Sustainable Wood Furniture Made of Eastern White Pine

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Continuing the centuries-long tradition of classical New England craftsmanship, Massachusetts furniture maker Bostonwood offers unfinished real wood furniture products made of Eastern White Pine. All of the furniture is built locally, with the workshop located just a few miles from the retail stores, and use sustainable materials grown in the region.

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“Being an environmentally aware company we proudly produce our products using eastern white pine which is harvested from sustainable sources in New England,” says the company. “Each of our suppliers is a member of the Forest Stewardship Council, an International non-profit group that supports responsible forestry management. This means you can rest assured that the piece your are purchasing is not the result of irresponsible clear cutting forestry such as many of the import hardwoods in use.”

Bostonwood even donates the sawdust created by its tools during the furniture making process to local farms for bedding. They also recycle the small pieces of wood cut off from the ends of large boards for things like step stools and small drawers, or give them to local elementary schools for craft-making.