The Emerson Writing & Drawing Desk

Viewer Project - By Tri-Lox from Brooklyn, NY
Added on February 21, 2013

In spring 2012, Tri-Lox was invited to participate in the 12 x 12 NYC, a furniture design exhibition that paired twelve contemporary designers with reclaimed wood from twelve historic New York City sites. We were honored to be part of the exhibition, which was in conjunction with Design Week 2012. Our materials were salvaged from 131-137 Emerson Place, a storage building in historical Fort Greene, Brooklyn that saw the neighborhood’s population explore over the course of the 19th century. Fort Greene has been home to artists and writers from Walt Whitman to Robert Maplethorpe and we wanted to create a piece that paid tribute to the area’s rich literary and artistic history: hence the writing and drawing table. The wood was donated by Sawkill Lumber and delivered to our workshop as massive beams. We had the beams milled to fit the parameters of our design, though we chose to build our table around a loose tenon and lap joints, which pay homage to the materials. The tabletop itself features a live edge, displaying the natural characteristics of the wood. The piece is adjustable, hinged on two brass slides attached to the back legs of the table. We created a matching stool, but the stool’s seat is made not of the Long Leaf Yellow Pine, but instead of an Alaskan Yellow Cedar salvaged from a New York City water tower; the dark color of the seat is its natural patina, a result of its years of exposure to the elements.

We were thrilled to take part in this exhibition because it encapsulated everything we at Tri-Lox stand for: reclaiming and repurposing materials from our environment that the world would have otherwise overlooked.

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