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PrintHe Speaks For the Trees
Root Cause does for local wood what ASAP does for local food
Lang Hornthal and a creation of Appalachian Designs
http://www.appalachiandesigns.com
By now, most bright-eyed consumers know that tilapia from Chile is a dicey prospect and that blueberries are best bought at one's local tailgate market. Popular nonprofits such as Appalachian Sustainable Agricultural Project have achieved bountiful strides in hipping consumers to the personal, financial, and social benefits of buying local. And what ASAP's done for food, Root Cause, the new branch of woodworking company Appalachian Designs, intends to do for regional forests.
A high-end manufacturer of custom rustic furniture, stairs, and railings, Appalachian Designs is training its focus on what it calls "the missing link between unused forest materials of the Southern Appalachians and many available uses for them." This means so-called "small-diameter wood" -- twisted laurel, hardy locust, ubiquitous pine: the typical waste of development sites. Founder/artist Lang Hornthal is a master craftsman whose work in this field already anchors the aesthetic of some of America's most intriguing locales, including locust-wood benches at Massachusetts' Plimoth Plantation; log railings at the newly remodeled Marco Island Historical Society in Marco Island, FL; and 15,000 feet of rhododendron fencing surrounding a roller coaster in Canobie Lake Park in Salem, NH.
Closer to home, Hornthal's work can be found inside important homes (including the North Carolina Governor's Western Residence) and private recreational facilities; e.g., Mountain Air Country Club. But with a new, USDA-funded WNC Forest Products Cooperative Marketing Grant, administered by ASAP and by Land of Sky Regional Council, Hornthal hopes to expand Root Cause. WNC, after all, was the birthplace of such initiatives, being the home to the nation's first forestry school. Local lobbyists were first to push the Weeks Act of 1911, a groundbreaking piece of conservation legislation. Nourishing that spirit a century later, Root Cause hopes to provide income opportunities for landowners and loggers while creating new material for craftspeople, all canopied under smarter management of regional forests.
Check out the website for a detailed vision.
