Turning salvaged timber into furniture

This dining table by Live Edge Design is typical of the salvaged-timber commissions Live Edge receives from property owners.
Photograph by: Handout image, Courtesy of Live Edge Design Inc
It's not unusual -- according to the president of a Vancouver Island furniture company -- for West Coast people to regard their trees "as one of the family."

"Many people are attached to the trees on their property," says John Lore, of Live Edge Design, "so if they lose one that's been part of the family for a long time we can build something out of it for them. It's a way of keeping it in their lives."

Typically the Duncan-based company salvages wood, with many people calling them in after a wind-or snowstorm. (It takes at least a year to air-and then kiln-dry the pieces: "You have to do it very slowly or else you get warping and cracking," he says.)

"There are not too many people looking for the big gnarly old maple trees; we have the market to ourselves," says Lore, who also doubles as the firm's artistic director with jurisdiction over picking the wood and having the last say on design.

He likes to take the less premeditated approach to furniture making: "Ideally, we find the piece of wood and then decide what to make out of it," he says.

The company's name is its signature: "Mostly we like to do things that have a natural aspect to them -- we like to leave on the live edge, which is the growing part of the tree under the bark otherwise known as the cambium layer," he says, adding that the interior of a tree, of course, is stagnant.

It is up to the customer to choose the table's base ( "a trestle is great for getting your legs underneath without bashing them ...," Lore says) and its general character.

The top of the native bigleaf maple on the Long Beach dining table, for example, can be "fairly rectangular with smooth edges or they can have it as wild as they want," he explains. "You can mix it with a fairly contemporary base and still get away with these crazy shapes, colours and knots in the top. Then every time you look at it you see something different and it keeps it fresh and interesting over a long time. It's down to individual preference."

The Long Beach table starts at $5,000.

Live Edge Design, 5195 Mearns Road, Duncan (250-748 0763; liveedge.com)