Burls, whorls, knots, spalting — the creations of Reid Harris, co-owner of Northern Edge Craftworks, highlight a story unique to each tree he hand-crafts into a table, a bench, or another piece of furniture.
Many of Harris’ creations showcase what’s called the tree’s live edge — the natural line where the outer bark removed.
“It takes a lot of work,” Harris said. “It has to be hand sanded, hand finished.”
It’s also, however, “alive, organic and unique” — something that, in a video on his website, Harris says is closer to interpreting wood than crafting it.
Two years ago, Harris made a table for himself out of a scrap of wood he got from a friend’s shop. Encouraged by friends who wanted something like it for themselves, he incorporated his business, Northern Edge Craftworks, 18 months ago.
Heather Harris, Reid Harris’ sister, is co-owner of the company and an artist in her own right.
Reid Harris has worked with wood since high school, and he remembers being a kid wowed by his dad’s chainsaw.
“I thought, ‘This is like a light saber for trees; it’s absolutely amazing,’” he said, laughing. “Ever since, I just had a passion for working with wood and trees, and I spend a lot of time outside and walking around the forest or skiing, so I spend a lot of time staring at trees.”
Everything that goes into the furniture at Northern Edge Craftworks is as local as Harris can keep it. So far, he’s gotten all his wood — red alder, red cedar, yellow cedar, Sitka spruce — from Icy Strait Lumber in Hoonah. Owner Wes Tyler gives him the exact coordinates of each tree harvested, and Harris marks those coordinates on the underside of each piece of furniture. (He also writes the name of the piece and the number; he’s created 28 pieces so far.)
Some of those pieces are at other Juneau entrepreneurs’ businesses: he has work at Kindred Post; Amalga Distillery has ordered a big counter; Rainforest Farms, the marijuana depot in downtown Juneau, wants a counter; he’s making an 18-foot-long shelf for Brendan Sullivan’s salon, Salon Cedar. He also works with other entrepreneurs: Adam Dimmitt of local shop Adam’s Bent Metal makes most of the legs for Harris’ tables and benches using a CNC plasma cutter.
In the future, Harris hopes to increase production, but keep his business in Alaska, using local wood. (In addition to owning Northern Edge Craftworks, Harris works as staff at the legislature. It’s when the legislature’s not in session that he works on his craft full-time.) Because each piece is unique, he doesn’t anticipate ever doing massive orders of identical pieces, but ideally he’d like to have some employees and to create a few hundred pieces each year.
So far, much of his work has been commissioned. Sometimes people want traditional shapes, but still the live edge aspect; for that, Harris might cut the piece down the middle and turn the edge inside, as with a table on display at The Canvas at REACH, where Northern Edge Craftworks is displaying this month, with the symmetrically mirrored live edges centered throughout the table and covered in glass.
Working with live edge and unique pieces of wood takes time. Just under the bark of a tree is a vertical, differently colored strip of wood, and the outer edge can be a silvery-grayish color reminiscent of weathered beach towns.
He doesn’t get upset if a piece of wood cracks, he said, instead focusing on the beauty that anomalies create, pulling them back together with hand-chiseled bow tie splines.
“Northern Edge Craftworks offers an amazing story, and I think that’s part of its appeal,” he said. “When I build a table… this is something your grandchildren can have. I’m interested in things that (outlast) our own lives.”
Northern Edge Craftworks’ show will be up at the Canvas until July 26.
Northern Edge Craftworks’ website is www.northernedgecraftworks.com; its Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/groups/1539055613024097/.
Reid Harris, owner of Northern Edge Craftworks, creates live-edge tables, benches, and other furnishings using locally sourced, sustainable wood. On the underside of each piece, he even stamps the GPS location where the tree was harvested. A show of his work will be up at The Canvas at REACH until July 26. Mary Catharine Martin | Capital City Weekly
This table, created by Reid Harris of Northern Edge Craftworks, is on display at The Canvas until July 26.
This table, by Reid Harris of Northern Edge Craftworks, is on display at The Canvas until July 26. Photo by Reid Harris.
