Reflecting on THE legacy of artistic problem-solver Wharton Esherick

If you’re familiar with the work of Wharton Esherick (1887–1970), you’re probably imagining the most famous spiral staircase in Pennsylvania right now. Built in 1930 to replace a traditional staircase, it’s tightly curled and elegantly carved from red oak, with a rustic form that appears to defy gravity. Its thick treads seem to float as they spiral around a curvy central column. They’re actually mortised in place and supported by tenons, but the lack of any supporting structure (apart from a mastodon tusk handrail that was added in the late 1940s) gives the staircase an air of magic. It’s just one example from a long career in which Esherick seemed to ask himself what he could do with wood, and never backed away from a surprising answer. Unorthodox solutions and clever workarounds abound in his unique home and studio in Paoli, PA, which is now the site of the Wharton Esherick Museum. And that makes sense, because he never trained as a woodworker; first and foremost he was an artist, and he was able to fashion wonders from any material, never letting the strictures of carpentry fence him in.

The Spiral Staircase in Wharton Esherick's home and studio, 1930.
Photo credit: ©LeslieWilliamson from Handcrafted Modern, Rizzoli, 2010.

Wharton Esherick in his studio with his sculpture Oblivion (dated
1934.) Photo credit: c. 1934 by Emil Luks. Image courtesy of the
Wharton Esherick Museum.

Famous for saying “If it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing,” Esherick crafted furniture, made sculpture, designed lighting and interior fittings, and even whole buildings. He’s considered an icon of the Studio Furniture Movement of the mid-20th century, and having lived and worked in Bucks County, he’s also linked to a group of important Pennsylvania makers of his era: George Nakashima, Phillip Lloyd Powell, and Paul Evans. He came from a well-to-do Philadelphia family, and studied printmaking and drawing at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art (now known as the University of the Arts), then painting at PAFA, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He was discovering the world of painting just as American Impressionism was flourishing in Philadelphia and Bucks County. Esherick and his wife Letty settled in Paoli after finishing school and bought an historic farmhouse. Here he became interested in carpentry and the sculptural possibilities afforded by wood.

Esherick initially carved woodcuts—a natural outgrowth of his printmaking practice from art school—then he began making abstract sculptures from wood from in the 1920s. In 1926 his work was exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He then embarked on the long process of designing and building his own home and studio. And by the mid-1930’s, he was creating elaborate interior elements for local clients such as his famous doorway and fireplace for the Curtis Bok House. Considered some of his most important works, the dramatic doorway was meant to evoke the look of draping fabric, while the fireplace, which echoes Art Deco design but veers toward a more extreme, angular style, was inspired by the dramatic shadows cast by a roaring fire.

Fireplace and door by Wharton Esherick from the Curtis Bok House,
1935. Image courtesy of the Wharton Esherick Museum.

“A Pennsylvania Hill House” designed by architect George Howe for
the "America at Home" display at the 1939 World's Fair. Photo by Richard Garrison. Image courtesy of the Wharton Esherick Museum.

Over the next several decades, his work was hard to pin down stylistically. Some works were crisp and geometric like the Bok House architectural elements. Others, like his own staircase and the biomorphic, abstract forms he sculpted, were soft and organic. In 1940, he created a suite of furniture for the exhibition “America at Home” for the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. Sixteen architects were invited to design rooms for the exhibition showcasing new American designs, and architect George Howe, who designed Philadelphia’s PSFS building on Market Street, invited Esherick to take part. Howe’s room was called “A Pennsylvania Hill House,” and its design captured the mix of modern and rustic style that was emerging in places like Bucks County in the middle decades of the 20th century. Esherick’s contributions to the exhibition included a sofa from the Bok house, the famous spiral staircase, a five-sided hickory table, and cherrywood wall panels. This exhibition represented the first time that Esherick’s work was seen by a wide-ranging public. Lousie V. Sloane, who was in charge of publicity for the “America at Home” display, wrote in a letter to Esherick that “The ‘Pennsylvania Hill House’ is a very popular room with visitors… and the stairway continues to bring forth exclamations, questions and comments from those who go through the building.” 

By his later years, Wharton Esherick was known among colleagues and admirers as the “Dean of American Craftsmen.” His work would eventually earn him a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Arts and Design) in 1958, and a Gold Medal from the New York Architectural League. His work is included in the collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. One legacy of Esherick’s earliest years working with wood—and a renewable form of accessible art—are his printed holiday cards.

When he was first settling in Paoli and exploring his new surroundings, he made prints that captured the seasons, and his snow-covered scenes of houses and hills were very popular when he made them (and they still are today.) One such print, called “January,” appeared in The Century Magazine, and other prints of his were published in Vanity Fair and The New Republic. “January” depicts a person walking up a road blanketed with snow, with a single blackbird perched on a nearby fence, and four more circling overhead. Using the end grain of a block of wood to create the image, he carved away much of the lower third of the print to leave a pillowy expanse of pristine snowfall. It has an air of mystery, with frost disguising the landscape underneath, and the figure faces away from us. Looking at this image now, it seems quite modern for 1923. And in 2020, there’s something uncannily familiar about it. This holiday season, marked in so many ways by the COVID pandemic, means that many of us have carved out small groups to celebrate with, and some of us will celebrate solo. It feels strange, and it’s not easy. Esherick’s print is not overtly “Christmas-y,” and contains no text, but its single figure with his neighborly birds sends us a timely and powerful message. The only thing to do, especially in the cold and unknown, is to walk straight ahead.

“January”, 1923, wood engraving by Wharton Esherick. Image courtesy
of the Wharton Esherick Museum.

SCHOTTEN & HANSEN at The Hudson Company

The Hudson Company is pleased to announce our new partnership with the venerable German flooring company Schotten & Hansen, which produces responsibly harvested wood of peerless quality. Now on view at our New York City showroom, the Schotten & Hansen Collection for The Hudson Company combines two distinct legacies in the design world, providing American clients with seamless access to Schotten & Hansen products. This new relationship means access to an expanded range of top quality lumber for flooring, panels and interiors with the service, knowledge, and craftsmanship you already know.

Founder Torben Hansen has described his company as a “mediator between nature and architecture.” Established in 1984, Schotten & Hansen is the premier producer of fine wood for flooring, paneling and interiors in Europe. Based in Peiting, Germany, Schotten & Hansen makes its wood products “for life,” meaning that their wood lasts a lifetime, and that their natural approach to sourcing and finishing wood is as safe as anything you would eat or wear. No solvents or acrylic glues ever touch Schotten & Hansen lumber—the company finds all the ingredients they need in nature, using beeswax, minerals, and oils to color and finish their products. Like The Hudson Company, Schotten & Hansen provides the finest quality wood available to some of the most prominent interior designers and architects in the world. Schotten & Hansen’s project can be found all over the globe. Several recent highlights in New York include the new GOOP Store, the Crosby Street Hotel in SoHo, the Whitby Hotel in Midtown, and numerous residences designed by top architects around the world.

Schotten & Hansen Shrunk Face, European Oak flooring in Driftwood color at Goop Lab, NYC. Photo: Adrian Gaut.

Schotten & Hansen Shrunk Face, European Oak flooring in Oyster Dark color at The Crosby Street Hotel, NYC. Design by Kit Kemp. Photo: Simon Brown.

The partnership between The Hudson Company and Schotten & Hansen means access to a new range of top quality lumber for flooring, panels and interiors with the service, knowledge, and craftsmanship you already know. Schotten & Hansen’s practice of finishing wood by hand yields a product that’s designed to stand the test of time and age beautifully. Torben Hansen believes machines are “no match” for traditional German woodworking techniques. Their wood is the lumber equivalent of haute couture: you won’t find a more luxurious or perfectly finished product anywhere. A tree’s life cycle doesn’t end when it is harvested; if it’s crafted and finished in just the right way, its wood enhances the beauty of an interior and enriches the experience of those who live there for generations to come.

BROWSE OUR SCHOTTEN & HANSEN COLLECTION

The Finishing Touch on a New York Showroom

If Schotten & Hansen had a kindred spirit in the interior design world, it may have been Christian Liaigre, the French designer of furniture and interiors who passed away in September aged 77. Back in 2018, his eponymous firm opened a new showroom on 29th Street in Manhattan’s Nomad district, where his signature aesthetic—described in The New York Times by Penelope Green as “muscular and elegant”—was made manifest with flooring from Schotten & Hansen. Liaigre was devoted to fine craftsmanship, and admired the skill of accomplished makers. He designed interiors for Calvin Klein and Karl Lagerfeld, and he loved using elemental materials like bronze, stone, and wenge wood. He’s also credited with pioneering the concept of the boutique hotel, having designed SoHo’s Mercer Hotel in 1997—his first big project in the United States.

Liaigre showroom, New York City.

Hotel Montalembert, Paris.

Born in 1943 near La Rochelle, Liaigre studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. His inspiration came from an array of sources, many of which, like African art, had widely influenced French Modernism. He was also the grandson of a horse breeder, and growing up he studied the ingenious design and construction of saddles, bridles and stirrups carefully. He liked exposed joinery, and disliked applied ornament, which meant his interiors and furniture were in sync with the pared down modern look of post-industrial lofts in the 1990’s and 2000’s.

He designed the Hotel Montalembert in Paris for a 1990 renovation before moving to the United States, and there he made bold, eclectic choices like pairing carved African sculptures with Ancien Régime furniture. He was also famous for a stool he designed in homage to Brancusi’s “Endless Column,” a square block of wood that flares out at a dramatic angle at the top, forming a primitive seat.

Liaigre showroom, New York City.

Custom floors by Schotten & Hansen at the Liaigre Showroom, NYC.

Liaigre’s reverence for craftsmanship comes through in the design of his New York showroom. The floors are Schotten & Hansen’s Shrunk Face European Oak, which is a light, straw-colored wood (the color is custom, in fact) and adds a depth of natural texture to the crisp space, emphasizing Liaigre’s particular love of wood in all its subtle variation. The interior is meant to be a neutral setting in which to stage Liaigre’s pieces of furniture and lighting, which are invariably bold in design, at times massive, understated in color, and usually sumptuous in their material.

Shrunk Face Oak is now available in 20 colors at our New York showroom through the Schotten & Hansen Collection for The Hudson Company.

A Thousand Skills: George Nakashima

You’ve probably seen George Nakashima’s furniture in the pages of shelter magazines, at auction, and in museum and gallery exhibitions across the country. His aesthetic influence is everywhere: your favorite cafe might have an eye-catching espresso bar with a live edge, or you might see a midcentury-style bench you like at a mass-market furniture retailer that ‘echoes’ one of Nakashima’s designs, to put it diplomatically. Or you might have heard his name and seen photographs of him with his family in an episode of the series Artbound on KCET, “Masters of Modern Design: The Art of the Japanese American Experience,” which tells the story of some of the renowned artists and designers who spent time in internment camps during World War II. Writing in Curbed in 2017, the architecture critic Alexandra Lange examined the connection between American design history and Executive Order 9066, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed in 1942. The order granted authority to the military to transport citizens to “relocation centers” in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. We call them internment camps today, and about 119,000 people—most of them Japanese immigrants or Japanese-Americans—were sent to live there for several years during World War II. George Nakashima was among them, as were the artists Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi.

Nakashima was already a citizen of the world prior to the war, having spent a year traveling abroad on a round-the-world steamship ticket after graduate school. Born in 1905 in Spokane, Washington to Japanese emigré parents, he grew up hiking and camping in the forests of the Pacific Northwest with the Boy Scouts. He studied forestry at the University of Washington-Seattle, but was drawn to design as well, and graduated with a BA in architecture in 1929. He earned an MA in architecture from M.I.T. in 1931, and embarked on his world tour, spending a bohemian year in France, then traveling to North Africa, and finally to Japan. Nakashima met and eventually worked for the American architect Antonin Raymond, an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, and he toured Japan studying building techniques and design. In the late 1930s, he was the project architect on the Golconde Dormitory at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India, where he discovered two practices that would shape his life: yoga and furniture-making.

He returned to Japan in 1940, where he met the woman who would become his wife, Marion Okajima, and the two settled in Seattle after marrying in Los Angeles. But in 1942, now with a new daughter named Mira, the Nakashimas were sent to Camp Minidoka, an internment camp in Hunt, Idaho. Incredibly, he used the time there to apprentice himself to a woodworker named Gentauro Hikogawa who had been trained in Japan. Hikogawa taught Nakashima to work expertly with Japanese hand tools and helped him master Japanese joinery techniques. He used whatever wood scraps he could find to practice his craft and develop his first designs for furniture. In 1943, his old mentor Antonin Raymond sponsored the Nakashimas for early release, and offered them his chicken farm in rural New Hope, PA as a place to stay. Mira Nakashima recalls that her father believed the name of the small town—which was becoming a mecca for woodworkers at the time—augured well for a fresh start. Nakashima quickly made connections with Knoll, for whom he designed several furniture lines such as the Straight Back Chair, and he designed a sofa for Widdicomb-Mueller which has gone back into production.

But most of Nakashima’s works were unique. He was famous for using butterfly joints, which allowed him to select unusual, asymmetrical pieces of wood and transform them into inviting dining tables and coffee tables. Nakashima had numerous lifelong clients, and he often signed their names in ink on boards that he selected especially for them. The largest private collection of Nakashima furniture was, for a time, that of Nelson and Happy Rockefeller, who owned over 200 works that Nakashima had designed for their Pocantico Hills estate. His passion for architecture, like his passion for forestry and trees, never wavered, and he was able to weave all three activities together at his home and studio. He designed buildings on his property, and was especially enamored of parabolic shapes, which led to the creation of a line of chairs called “Conoid,” with gently curved backs, which were named for the dramatic roofline of a building he called the Conoid Studio. In a sense, Nakashima didn’t believe in flaws. In his 1981 book The Soul of a Tree, which offered a glimpse at his philosophy and his technique and life story, he wrote: “Each flitch, each board, each plank can have only one ideal use. The woodworker, applying a thousand skills, must find that ideal use and then shape the wood to realize its true potential.”

Nakashima’s Conoid Studio in New Hope, PA. Courtesy of George Nakashima Woodworkers.

The George Nakashima House, Studio and Workshop is now a United States National Historic Landmark and a World Monument, and although it’s temporarily closed as of July, 2020 due to the pandemic, the site is generally open to visitors. Today, Nakashima’s daughter Mira, who is an accomplished designer herself, works alongside a team of highly skilled woodworkers to produce both classic and new designs. A grant from the Getty Foundation has helped in the preservation and conservation of the site and its many unusual structures. There’s a museum and gallery in the city of Takamatsu, Japan where Nakashima once had a studio. In 1983, the man who once jokingly referred to himself as a “Japanese Quaker” was presented with the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese government. A key figure in American Modernism who spent most of his life in Bucks County, PA, Nakashima deftly combined the woodworking and design traditions of the United States and Japan. Despite his harrowing wartime experience as a Japanese American during the conflict that pitted the two countries against one another, he seemed to remain deeply rooted, aesthetically and philosophically, in both worlds.

The Valley Rock Inn

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The first summer that Lisa Bowles had her modern design boutique Roark open in Sag Harbor, she got a visit one day from Michael Bruno. Immediately sensing the aesthetic of a kindred spirit, Bruno invited Bowles to be part of a new online design community he was building at the time. (You may have heard of it: 1stDibs.) From that point on, with their shared love of offbeat glamour and a fondness for unusual vintage treasures, Bruno and Bowles have worked together on projects great and small. In 2016, Bruno invited Bowles up to Sloatsburg, New York, a small town just south of Tuxedo Park. Sloatsburg was a bit down at the heels back then, and the potential of the property that Bruno wanted to show Bowles required a bit of imagination and optimism. But knowing Bruno’s instincts, Bowles was sold, and she embarked on the process of helping him shape the chic and beautifully landscaped destination that’s now known as the Valley Rock Inn & Mountain Club.

Just 45 minutes from Manhattan by train, Valley Rock has an ideal perch in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains, and guests can explore the nearby Harriman State Park and Sterling Forest. There are four impeccably renovated guest cottages known as Waldron Houses that date from the mid-19th century. There’s an organic market, a 70-foot pool and outdoor lounge area, a fitness center with a spin studio, and a grand dining lodge that’s getting its final interior touches this summer. Bruno envisioned Valley Rock as an active getaway spa for people who love to hike and explore, so the look and feel of the place is sturdy and stylish rather than fussy. 

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The design process unfolded organically, Bowles says, recalling that when she embarked on the project with Bruno, the property was in pretty rough shape. The Waldron houses needed to be gutted and replumbed. There were old cars on the grass, and there was only one structure that had working heat, so their first winter there, they used it as a temporary office. With their work cut out for them, it was reasonable to wonder: why this location? Well, Sloatsburg had seen better days, but the nearby towns of Suffern and Warwick both had quaint and lively downtowns with appealing restaurants and shops. And in general, the Hudson Valley was thriving: it’s close to New York City, and it offers cultural attractions like DIA Beacon and Storm King sculpture park, along with its unspoiled forests, mountains and streams. So despite a gritty exterior, there was every reason to hope that Sloatsburg could thrive too.

So Bowles went to work doing what she does best, and collaborated with Michael to source the objects and textiles they needed to make the Waldron houses feel smart and welcoming. With their shared portfolio of antiques from Roark and Michael’s own collecting over the years, they had a warehouse, and they’d effectively “shop their closet” to find what they needed. Working with her favorite upholsterer, Bowles created double-faced curtains so that the right side of the fabric would be visible from the outside looking in. Bruno had told Bowles that he wanted the space to feel like “The Hamptons in the Hudson Valley,” and it turns out that what that looks like is “plaid, but modernist,” Bowles says.

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The building where the design team had their temporary offices was initially covered in metal siding and had a tar roof. But when those layers were removed, what they found underneath turned out to be a gem: a former fire station building with charming features and great light, which ended up being the only structure they kept very close to its original state. Bruno wanted to keep the building’s original interior beams, and appropriately enough, this is the building where Bowles used The Hudson Company’s  French oak for the floors, Homestead in 7” widths, and Shrunk Face in 10.5” widths. This building is the future home of one of the Inn’s dining spaces, which will have all the historic character of its fire station roots. And our flooring is very much in the spirit of the space. As Bowles says of The Hudson Company’s hand-milled wood, “every flaw is impeccable.”

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Why We Manufacture

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March, a shift from in-person to remote work swept every “non-essential” workplace practically overnight. Suddenly television news anchors were broadcasting from their homes against subdued digital backdrops. Classrooms went virtual, and students became expert “zoomers.” Museums shifted their operations to the web, and began sharing ever more content via Instagram and virtual events and tours. Novice sourdough bread enthusiasts shared their exploits on social media, while others sang the praises of a popular YouTube-based yoga teacher. Writing in the New York Times, reporter Dana Rubenstein noted that many politicians and journalists doing interviews from home were conspicuously displaying The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s massive 1974 biography of Robert Moses on their shelves, along with elegant ceramics and framed photos within view of the camera lens. (There’s even a Twitter feed that documents Power Broker sightings on TV.) It almost started to feel normal.

Of course, digital and virtual economies were vital before the pandemic, too. High school TikTok stars and Instagram influencers have real power (and make real money) these days, not as hobbyists, but as stand-up comics, singer-songwriters, and as arbiters of fashion and style. But as the experiences of brave essential workers demonstrated starkly at the pandemic’s height, digital work is limited to certain fields and certain kinds of jobs. There is no such thing as a digital emergency room doctor or EMT, or a virtual bus driver, or an online-only grocery store stocker. We live in the flesh and blood world, and we can only conduct certain aspects of our daily lives from behind a glowing screen.

Like every other business, when the pandemic began, The Hudson Company had to quickly find workarounds in order to keep functioning safely. We were already doing certain things that made this transition possible: we have a website, social media feeds, we can share digital documents and images instantly, and we can communicate with clients and colleagues using video chat. But when New York State mandated that non-essential businesses close down in March, we had to close our showrooms and our Pine Plains mill. Just like companies that make fabric, tiles or lighting fixtures, there are things that simply cannot be accomplished virtually.

Take reclamation, for example: the expertise and hand skills necessary to deconstruct a barn or farmhouse are years in the making. Each old barn is unique, and our experts need to know what they’re looking at and how to deconstruct it, which is a different task every time. What kind of wood is it? How old is it? What kind of shape is it in? Then the wood comes to our mill. How should it be treated and processed? What features does our client need for a particular project? The tools and techniques required to mill and finish wood, especially to the high standards we’re known for, are not something that can be mastered overnight, nor can they be accomplished alone. Our team has years of expertise, and they work together in real time to produce the flooring and paneling we offer.

New York State has started lifting some of the restrictions for non-essential businesses, but we’re still practicing social distancing, frequent handwashing and mask-wearing, and probably will continue to do so for some time. This may be our new normal. We usually hear the word “manufacture” in the context of industry, and we picture assembly lines, huge factories, and smart machines making things at high speed. But the word “manufacture” itself predates industry, and its Latin root words mean “to make” (facere) “by hand” (manus). Our digital tools, from Instagram to Zoom, have kept us connected these past few months, and we’re grateful for them. Indeed, we probably couldn’t survive without them. But if this experience has taught us anything, it’s that nothing can replace the know-how, creativity, or trained eye of a human being.

The West Village Townhouse

At The Hudson Company we often reclaim wood from centuries-old barns in rural areas that are miles from the nearest town. But occasionally we find antique treasures in buildings that are right around the corner from the entrance to the nearest Manhattan subway station. For a project with architect David Bucovy in Manhattan’s West Village, we actually salvaged, milled and re-installed wood that was found within the structure of the jobsite itself—adaptive reuse at its best. 

The house sits along one of Greenwich Village’s most beautifully preserved historic streets, and likely dates from the 1840s, according to Bucovy. Over the years it had been occupied by a cast of New York characters, and though it was originally designed as a single-family home, it was later subdivided into apartments, and even housed a dentist’s office for a time. By the time Bucovy encountered it, the whole building needed structural work, so it was a prime candidate for a gut renovation, which he undertook with Scordio Construction. (The landmarked exterior remained as-is).

Some architects and designers approach renovations like this one with an eye toward preserving or reanimating a 19th century aesthetic, recreating interior details that look the part, or finding period-appropriate lighting fixtures and mirrors to visually root the home in another era. Bucovy and his client took a totally different approach: “We had a desire to make it primal and real, rather than a textbook ‘authentic,’ museum-like renovation.” The client wanted to avoid an all-white kitchen and high-gloss paint, and use old world materials instead. “It’s a house about materiality,” Bucovy says, “the story that hand-wrought plaster tells, or woodgrain.”

The home’s renovated interior doesn’t recall that of a typical West Village row house so much as a château in the South of France, with exposed beams, rustic antiques and kitchen tools, and warm plaster walls throughout. The design team avoided painted gypsum board, and instead used a method called tadelakt, a plastering technique popular in Morocco and other parts of North Africa, in which marble dust and plaster are burnished to make a waterproof wall surface. It can be dyed with umber, and has an earthy, ancient look and feel (and indeed, the technique dates back to ancient Rome).

It turned out that some of the original, 19th century wood used throughout the house—a mix of Hemlock, Pine and Spruce, probably local—was perfect for their needs. We worked with the homeowner and the demolition crew and were able to salvage structural timbers and softwood joists. We brought it up to our mill in Pine Plains and processed it as we usually do: removing old nails, resawing and kiln-drying it, ripping, planing, profiling and end-matching the boards so that they could be reinstalled as ceiling and wall panels. We kept the Original Face, which is weathered through a mix of oxidation, patina, and signs of historic use. Bucovy especially likes Original Face for the way “it records its history and imperfections,” he says. 

This aesthetic of exquisite imperfection runs through much of the home’s design and the works of art that the owner installed throughout: wabi-sabi, which is a Japanese concept characterized as the acceptance of imperfection and impermanence. Rooted partly in Buddhist ideals, wabi-sabi celebrates the off-kilter beauty that can be found both in nature and in works of art and design that are asymmetrical, rough, or austere. Bucovy finds inspiration in this concept, and his client happens to be a serious collector of postwar Japanese and Korean art. The aesthetics of these paintings and sculptures happen to dovetail seamlessly with the rustic European look of the interior. Bucovy and the homeowner worked together and sourced both old and new pieces from Belgian art and antiques dealer Axel Vervoort, whose sophisticated farmhouse aesthetic has inspired a renewed enthusiasm for primitive antiques that has thrived despite the lasting dominance of Modernism.

Alongside works of abstract art from Japan and Korea, there are butter-making tools, ceramics, baskets and pieces of furniture dating back to the 1700’s across various parts of Europe. There are Buxy limestone countertops from an extinguished quarry in France. All of these touches complement the wall treatments, hardware and the wood paneling, which has its own story to tell, from 1840’s Greenwich Village, up to the Hudson Valley, and back again in the 21st century.

Carved by Nature: the Sculptural Appeal and Origins of Mushroom Wood

Reclaimed, Char Dyed, Mushroom Wood paneling at McCann Erickson offices in New York City.

The paneling that clads the elevator bank walls in McCann Erickson’s New York offices is silky black and heavily grooved, and it looks as though a sculptor has drawn a gouging tool across its shiny surface to make a pattern. But no tools were needed to craft these grooves; in fact, the wood developed these traits after years of service in the cultivation of mushrooms. Though it’s technically a mix of hemlock and cypress, we call it mushroom wood. 

Mushrooms grow wild in the woods, and thrive in dark, damp conditions where there’s plenty of decaying plant matter to provide the organism with energy—no sunlight required. To recreate these conditions, mushroom farmers set up growing beds indoors, often building structures that look a bit like the shelves inside a cheese cave, only they’re prepared with trays of manure and substrate. The beds are built from hemlock or cypress, and the substrate is typically derived from a grain like millet or rye on which the spores can grow. The manure contains enzymes which erode the growing boards over time, and after about fifteen years, they’re no longer suitable for use on the farm.

Mushrooms growing.

The dark and damp beds of a mushroom farm.

This is the moment when we harvest them: we have a relationship with mushroom growers in the mid-Atlantic region, and we regularly trade old boards for new ones. By the time we get them, the old boards have developed a rich color and texture that makes them ideal for interiors that call for rustic or boldly textured paneling. The design advantage of mushroom wood is, paradoxically, the uniformity of its quirks. The enzymatic erosion weather the wood’s surface substantially, but does so very evenly on boards as long as sixteen feet.

Harvested Mushroom Wood.

When the wood arrives at our mill in Pine Plains, we remove the nails, power wash it, dry it in a kiln, then mill it, and it’s ready for use. We offer mushroom wood in four ways. There are two types of mushroom wood that can be used for flooring: Backside with original saw kerf, and New Face. Backside has a rich caramel patina, while New Face is lighter, and more uniform in color throughout. The two Sculpted forms of mushroom wood are suitable for paneling or ceilings, as in this dramatic installation at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Our Sculpted Face, which can be found on the walls of Donostia Restaurant in London, is caramel-colored and has naturally sculpted and radial kerfed faces giving it a complex surface design. Our Sculpted Face can be Char Dyed, as seen in the McCann Erickson offices where it offers a dramatic, sophisticated design element that isn’t fussy.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood adorns the ceiling of the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City.

Reclaimed, Sculpted, Mushroom Wood Paneling at Donastia Restaurant.

Reclaimed, Mushroom Wood Paneling at a private residence in the desert.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood, Sculpted, paneling.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood, New Face, flooring.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood, Char Dyed, paneling.

Reclaimed Mushroom Wood, Backside, flooring.

The Art of Yun Hyong-keun: Where Nature and Abstraction Meet

Yun Hyong-keun at his atelier in Sinchon, 1974. Courtesy Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. Image Copyright: Yun Seong-ryeol.

Spend some time looking at a painting by artist Yun Hyong-keun (1928 – 2007), and you might imagine that you’re looking at a group of trees. Dark, vertical forms stand at either side of the canvas. Seen one way, they appear to be massive tree trunks on either side of an open clearing. Or seen another way, they could be the dark edges of a wooded area at night, and in between them, the beam of a flashlight splits the darkness. Yun Hyong-keun is a widely acclaimed abstract painter, but there is something unusually earthy about his works on paper and canvas. His compositions seem to echo the architecture of the natural world, not in a sweet or cloying way, but with a sense of nature’s great power. With the knowledge that he spent time as a dissident during the Korean war hiding in a forest, the sight of large, imposing trees is a complex thing to behold. Are they protectors? Do they portend danger? Yun Hyong-keun spent decades of his extraordinary career negotiating these forms two dimensionally, all the while exploring and expanding on traditional Korean painting and paper-making techniques.

Yun Hyong-Keun, Umber-Blue (1978). Oil on cotton. 80.6 cm x 100 cm. Courtesy Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. Image Copyright: Yun Seong-ryeol.

In an essay for Ocula Magazine written on the occasion of Yun’s exhibition at Venice’s Palazzo Fortuny in 2019, critic Sherry Paik recounted the artist’s harrowing youth during the decades of World War II, the Japanese occupation of Korea, and the Korean War. According to the exhibition’s curator, Kim Inhye, he never set out to be a political artist, whose work referenced or mocked propaganda. But the circumstances of his life wouldn’t permit him to be a bystander. During his childhood in the 1930’s in Cheongju, Korea was occupied by Japan, and he was 17 when the end of World War II terminated the occupation in 1945. Yun went to study painting at Seoul National University, but he participated in protests against the U.S. Military Government in Korea, which had established the school, and he was expelled. Because of his activities, Yun was then placed under surveillance and enrolled in an anti-Communist program designed to re-educate suspected communists called the Bodo League. In 1950, when the Korean War began, many members (some of whom didn’t even realize they had been signed up) were executed. Yun escaped arrest and death by hiding in the woods.

Yun Hyong-keun, Burnt Umber & Ultramarine (1989). Oil on linen. 45.5 x 61 cm. Courtesy Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. Image Copyright: Yun Seong-ryeol.

Remarkably, Yun never stopped thinking about art, or making it whenever he could. In the early 1950s, he met the artist Kim Whanki, who helped Yun enroll at Hongik University in Seoul where he continued painting. His work at this time was awash in color, and he used vivid hues to make abstract forms. He painted on hanji—a traditional Korean paper made from the bark of mulberry trees—on which color would bleed and give his abstract shapes soft, feathery edges. By the 1970s, Yun and Kim were both considered members of a movement in abstract Korean contemporary art called Dansaekhwa. Working during these decades in postwar Korea, artists like Yun and his contemporaries did not have access to abundant artists’ materials. They were creative, and used what they had at hand: Korean handmade paper (hanji), pencils and ink, even coal, burlap, and iron. According to Sherry Paik, the Dansaekhwa artists experimented with “ways of manipulating material, including soaking, pulling, pushing, dragging, or ripping paper.” 

Yun Hyong-keun, Untitled (1972). Oil on hanji (Korean mulberry paper). 49 x 33 cm. Courtesy Estate of Yun Hyong-keun. Image Copyright: Yun Seong-ryeol.

Yun Hyong-keun: A Retrospective, 2019 Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy. Photo credit: © Laziz Hamani / Courtesy: The Estate of Yun Hyong-keun.

Yun was never entirely at home in Korea for political reasons, but his work started to gain attention abroad in Japan in the mid-1970s. By this time he had begun using more creative materials, particularly burnt umber and ultramarine blue paint on raw linen or canvas.

He had an exhibition in 1976 at the Muramatsu Gallery in Tokyo, and collectors in Japan began to buy his work. In the early 1990s, American Artist Donald Judd visited Korea where he had an exhibition at the Inkong Gallery in Seoul. Judd was taken by Yun’s work, and invited him to visit America, and to show his work at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas in 1994. Yun was then selected by the government of Korea to represent the country at the 46th Venice Biennale—an achievement that would have been nearly impossible to imagine in Yun’s earlier life.

Yun passed away in 2007, aged 79. The exhibition of his work at the Palazzo Fortuny was a meaningful coda to his exhibition at the Venice Biennale several decades earlier. The space in which the exhibition was staged is a grand, imperfect, sometimes raw space, with a riot of textures and colors, surrounded by water. Yun’s work always reflected nature’s mystery. He used natural materials inventively throughout his life to realize his ideas, from mulberry bark paper and burnt umber to linen and charcoal. Seen against the backdrop of this idiosyncratic, historic setting—rather than workaday perfection of a typical white cube gallery—Yun’s paintings seemed right at home: works of art, perched on the line that divides abstract design from natural forms, made with the materials and tools at hand, mapping the edges of nature, as the water lapped against the building.

Yun Hyong-keun: A Retrospective, 2019, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy. Photo credit: © Laziz Hamani.

At Home in Germantown, New York, with Amanda Pays, Corbin Bernsen & Reclaimed Beams from The Hudson Company.

Above: Corbin and Amanda and sons at their new residence (the photo was taken by their oldest son’s girlfriend and became this year’s holiday card).

Actor Corbin Bernsen and his wife Amanda Pays, an interior designer, are seasoned serial renovators. According to a recent article in Remodelista, they’ve lived in 25 houses over their three-decade marriage. (Bernsen even has a film production company called “Star Handyman.”) The couple recently bid farewell to Los Angeles, moved east, and put down roots in the Hudson Valley, where changing seasons and snowfall are giving the family—who were used to sunshine and palm trees—a novel experience that they seem to relish. They bought an 1880s farmhouse in Germantown, NY that needed a gut renovation, but they’ve preserved as many original details as they could, and added in some selective antique touches.

Above: “We went down to the studs and nothing else,” says Corbin of the 1,700 square foot interior. “This is the equivalent of a bionic house.” Explains Amanda: “We replaced or added HVAC, all plumbing, all electric, insulation, new drywall, bathrooms, and the kitchen.”

The couple both come from renovator families: Pays’ father bought and fixed up old properties in southeast England where she grew up, and Bernsen became a skilled carpenter by learning from his uncle and his mother. To give their 1,700 square foot farmhouse a more open floor plan, they removed some walls on the first floor, and installed antique beams to add some rustic beauty to the interior as well as structural support where needed. To find the beams, they turned to their new neighbors, The Hudson Company. The beams they chose are from our collection of Reclaimed Hand Hewn Beams which are salvaged from barns and farmhouses in the Hudson Valley and Canada. Each one is different, but many of them share lovely features: mortise holes, pockets and check marks, which give this farmhouse interior a tactile connection to its architectural heritage. And in Pays and Bernsen’s beautifully restored home, they look like they've always been there.

Above: Corbin’s guitar stands in a corner of the guest room. The reclaimed beams used throughout came from The Hudson Company.

Above: The tub, along with three sinks, came from Hoffman’s Barn in Redhook, NY.

Above: The living space opens to a roomy dining area and kitchen. The cabinets are Ikea—with Ikea’s vertical-grooved Hittarp fronts in an off-white lacquer that Amanda painted herself. “This isn’t something they recommend but it worked well: even the chipping looks authentic. I used a heavy Kilz primer—no sanding—followed by two coats of Benjamin Moore Chelsea Gray in a satin finish.”

Above: The couple—he’s 65, she just turned 60—say they love their new surroundings and plan to stay upstate.

Above: The moody back room with new built-in bookshelves is the library/TV room and Corbin’s home office.

Above: The master bedroom has a conceptual headboard: Amanda dragged the driftwood home from a walk along the Hudson River.

Read the full piece on REMODELISTA.