FURNITURE MAKER
Beavercreek native uses wood from damaged trees
An Ohio furniture maker is reclaiming wood from trees damaged by beetles and turning the material into colorful furniture pieces.
The mountain pine beetle has been destroying trees in the western U.S. and leaving behind wood stained blue by a fungus the insect spreads.
But the wood is still safe to use, and craftsmen like Todd Holbrook, a native of the Dayton area, have started making the timber into unique furniture.
“Even without knowing the story behind it, people seem to fall in love with just the color,” Holbrook said.
Holbrook, a Beavercreek native and principal at Ghost River Furniture, credits his Carroll High School shop teacher with his initial introduction to the craft.
“My parents still have the coffee table I made in high school,” he said.
Now Holbrook is working on increasing his business and working with manufacturers in the state to do so. While he had been making the furniture himself, with some help from his father, he recently signed a contract with Columbus Design & Manufacturing to make his furniture.
“Our goal is to leverage Ohio manufacturers that are already in place,” Holbrook said.
He’s been selling online with the help of websites like Wayfair and Gilt. Headboards are Ghost River’s best selling pieces, which start at $250. He also has high end dining tables for around $1,600 and a unique table called the Lewis & Clark with a supporting stringer underneath that is shaped like the precise 1804 expedition route the two men took.
Holbrook gets the wood for the projects from trees in Colorado and other western states that have been damaged by the mountain pine beetle that spreads a fungus that leaves blue streaks in the wood.
His brother in Colorado sent him pictures of trees affected by the beetles moving through Breckenridge and it sparked his interest and also soon sparked the interest of customers.
“Most of our customers are east coast so the closest outbreak would be something like Boulder, Colorado, which is thousands of miles away. They’ve never heard of the mountain pine beetle but they like the look of it,” he said.
Besides the reclaiming wood affected by the beetle, Holbrook has been also working with timber affected by the emerald ash borer, which has been killing Ash trees in Ohio.
“We’re trying to use as many bug-created opportunities as we can,” he said.