The design-obsessed focus on many things: the curves in an out-of-use font, the gradations between different Pantone color swatches, or the profiles of classic cars. Brooklyn-based furniture maker Mark Jupiter feels that way about the grains in aged wood. Touring the basement of his studio, where he stores salvaged pieces for future projects, is like going through an arboreal museum. There are staves from a Brooklyn water tower, and pieces of a pier fashioned from centuries-old pieces of redwood covered with mineral deposits from years spent soaking in the East River. A piece of reclaimed Georgia Heart Pine, the backbone of old warehouses and factories across the northeast, is being turned into a table. After running over the boards with a metal detector to remove old nails, planing them, then sending them upstate to dry in a kiln, Jupiter and his six employees are ready to build custom furniture. He tends to laugh when people say that reclaimed wood is cheaper.
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