Working for his brother’s tree removal company, John Metzler was saddened by the sight of so many trees headed for the landfill. Later, a job with a cabinet company brought him full circle to seeing trees in a new light.
Urban Tree Forge was born, a small Pittsburgh firm that offers the city (and the suburbs) a sustainable solution to urban tree removal. Metzler leased a building, formerly the high-end furniture maker Elias Studio, partnered with
Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest and hatched a plan to place salvaged wood back into a productive lifestyle.
“What I do is try to utilize the tree and put money back into the planting of trees, sometimes through Friends,” Metzler says. “Every time we use a tree, we plant a tree.”
Urban Tree Forge specializes in the art of blending furniture, sculpture, and art to create unique pieces based on a client’s desires. The locust is a hardwood worthy of floors. Sycamores possess an inner beauty. Urban Tree Forge can sometimes save clients money, but mostly it saves the tree from a definite and unrecycled death.
“Part of it is marrying a tree with a project,” Metzler says. “I had a client that wanted a tree out. We put him together with a client that wanted a bedroom set and the tree stayed in the community.”
Metzler is carving a sculpture of the three rivers into the headboard. He is also providing wood flooring for Pittsburgh Friends.
“If you use urban trees you can cut reliance on the national forest by 30 percent,” he adds. “When you’re shipping bamboo from Asian continents you’re not doing any favors to the carbon footprint. If you use material in the city, your carbon footprint stays right here and it’s really small.”
Writer:
Debra SmitSource: John Metzler, Urban Tree Forge
<!--[endif]--> Image courtesy Urban Tree Forge