Artful Rusticity: Organic Furniture by Urban Hardwoods

In many if not most places, when a tall old tree becomes befallen with disease and must be torn down, it gets chopped into firewood or hauled to a landfill. Not in Seattle, where a furniture company called Urban Hardwoods salvages doomed sycamores, elms, walnuts, Pacific madrones and other species and fashions them into one-of-a-kind household pieces.

The company makes a range of hand-crafted products, including dining and coffee tables, desks, side tables, benches and headboards. Each is marked by rich-grained wood and a distinct organic shape: a black walnut dinner table branches into a "Y"; a coffee table made from the cross-section of red cedar bears the outline of a clover leaf.

Urban Hardwoods has two showrooms, one in Seattle and another, opened this month, in San Francisco. It ships to all 50 states. The pieces range from $1,000 to $10,000.