About the Main Ingredient in our Furniture Line: Domestic Hardwoods

Many ingredients need to be just right to create high-quality wooden furniture. Particularly important is the sourcing of high-quality timbers at the start of every project. Seems obvious, right? But, what makes timber high quality, and where do we get it? It turns out, these are two of our most commonly asked questions.

 

Unloading a lumber delivery from one of our lumber suppliers, Moore Newton. Here, we’re using our trusty Apollo Stacker - it helps us move mountains!
Photo Credit: JOHI

 

Before we delve too deep, let’s focus on two of the values we weigh at JOHI in our selection of lumber. 

Sustainably Sourced Lumber – Over the years, we have consistently tried to narrow our wood usage to the USA’s domestic hardwoods. The rate at which trees grow, the health of the forests they come from, and the intended longevity of the designed products are all considerations to inform our development of new collection pieces. As we weigh choices for every launch, we rely heavily on our regional suppliers to help share fresh knowledge and advice.

Dry and Consistent Lumber  – It is one of the most important things to get right when building an heirloom-quality furniture piece. The wood has to be dried just right – not too fast and to the right moisture content for the intended application and destination. Wood is a natural material, always changing shape with the seasons and weather. Understanding how to design furniture that can both look beautiful and accommodate those changes over time, requires starting from a stable point. Sourcing from mills that know how to deliver the highest grades of hardwood means we will receive fewer defects and fewer unusable board sections, resulting in less waste of this valuable raw material.

 

 

To that: Work in progress of the ‘Ohana Table in White Ash, built by team Design & Product Development manager, Nicole Gardner.
Photo Credit: JOHI

 

Selecting lumber suppliers that also care about these values helps us achieve our goals. It means that our customers can trust in a line of accountability, from “forest to table.” This chain of custody includes forest managers and sawyers, down to distributors and truck drivers. While JOHI primarily deals with the last few members of this chain, we aim to work with businesses and people who have respect for each link in the chain of custody.

Let’s talk about our main supplier of Hardwood and Plywoods - Moore Newton.

 

Moore Newton delivery truck stops in at our Watsonville, Santa Cruz county workshop & studio.
Photo Credit: JOHI

 

Moore Newton has been a leading distributor of hardwood and panel products in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2008. As a distributor, they aggregate the best products on the market and ensure that makers and manufacturers, like JOHI, have access to the materials we need. That means they have every wood species in every cut and thickness we could need. It’s a big flex, and yet, not their biggest. 

We have been sourcing materials from them for 4 years now, ever since JOHI moved operations to California. Three things stand out to us about working with Moore Newton: 

(1) They care about the success of our projects and are always ready to help us deliver on the vision that we and our customers dream up. 

(2) They treat their people well. I spend a lot of time chatting with the handful of employees I get to interact with and I’ve yet to find the dirt. 

(3) They can answer the question, “Where does your hardwood come from?” when we want to learn more about a particular offering. I asked Jack Moore to help me understand our supply chain with Moore Newton a bit better, and he had this to say, 

“I purchase virtually all of our hardwood lumber in containerload quantities from about a dozen different mills. Most of these suppliers are private/family-owned and have been logging the same forests for generations.” 

 

 

As a small design studio, we are a small player in the manufacturing scene. Even still, we do what we can to help educate ourselves and our clients on the woods we use for certain projects. This allows our clients to align their purchases with their expectations for (a) quality craftsmanship, from raw material to end product, and (b) their own sustainability goals, too.

Next time, we’ll go even more local to talk about two of JOHI’s favorite places to source live edge hardwood slabs (especially Walnut slabs - which we have a few of in the shop right now)!

 

 

Visit our Field Collection to see some our Classics here at JOHI.

See how we play with curvature in the Dusk & Dawn collection.

Interesting in dreaming up a custom furniture piece for your home or business? Visit our design services.

 

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Saw saw chop chop, time to let the wood talk.

Post by Raja Badr-El-Din • Product Designer & Co-Founder