“We allow grains to spill. We love crumbling bark. We welcome wormholes.” John Houshmand’s collection aims to show what wood really looks like. After 25 years as a co-partner in a preeminent NYC-based contracting firm, Houshmand bought a saw-mill and spent his weekends there designing and crafting. He quit his job, transformed his Soho loft into a showroom and relocated to a 900-acre property in upstate New York, where he creates his furniture today. In his own words, the Yale-educated contractor-sculptor-musician “just sort of ran with it.”

No° 0094 Low Table. Designed by John Housmand.

Simultaneously rustic and polished; at first glance it seems like a sculpture contained within a display case. Imperfect planes of wood are juxtaposed against the rectangular polyhedron: a clear glass box with sharp corners. On his website, Houshmand explains that he is “challenging the division between fine and functional arts.” The low table, No° 0094, is part of Collection 03: a starfire open glass box with black walnut slabs. The slabs, of varying heights, puncture through the glass bottom. Also check out Houshmand’s chaise lounge: a fluid form of bronze atop an old-growth heart-pine beam.

Houshmand uses only salvaged American hardwood in his designs – and he doesn’t seek out “flawless” pieces. Trees whose lifespan has ended, and those not straight enough for mass producers are saved from a future as firewood. His projects, ranging from residential to commercial and hospitality, have included the outfitting of Robert de Niro’s Greenwich Hotel in New York, complete furnshings for a house in Mexico, and installations in office buildings. Regardless of the location or application, Houshmand’s philosophy remains the same: “We allow trees to do the talking. We simply listen.” Old and new; modern and traditional; natural and man-made: each of Houshmand’s designs is truly one-of-a-kind.