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Capital City WeeklY
July 20th, 2016
Aleph Designs highlights local trees’ unique stories
By Mary Catharine Martin | Capital City Weekly
Burls, whorls, knots, spalting — the creations of Reid Harris, owner of Aleph Designs, highlight a story unique to each tree he hand-crafts into a table, a bench, or another piece of furniture.
Many of Harris’ creations showcase what’s called the tree’s live edge — the natural line where the outer bark removed.
“It takes a lot of work,” Harris said. “It has to be hand sanded, hand finished.”
It’s also, however, “alive, organic and unique” — something that, in a video on his website, Harris says is closer to interpreting wood than crafting it.
Two years ago, Harris made a table for himself out of a scrap of wood he got from a friend’s shop. Encouraged by friends who wanted something like it for themselves, he incorporated his business, Aleph Designs, 18 months ago.
Reid Harris has worked with wood since high school, and he remembers being a kid wowed by his dad’chainsaw.
“I thought, ‘This is like a light saber for trees; it’s absolutely amazing,’” he said, laughing. “Ever since, I just had a passion for working with wood and trees, and I spend a lot of time outside and walking around the forest or skiing, so I spend a lot of time staring at trees.”
Everything that goes into the furniture at Aleph Designs is as local as Harris can keep it. So far, he’s gotten much of his wood — red alder, red cedar, yellow cedar, Sitka spruce — from Icy Strait Lumber in Hoonah. Owner Wes Tyler gives him the exact coordinates of each tree harvested, and Harris marks those coordinates on the underside of each piece of furniture. (He also writes the name of the piece and the number; he’s created 28 pieces so far.)
Some of those pieces are at other Juneau entrepreneurs’ businesses: he has work at Kindred Post; Amalga Distillery has ordered a big counter; Rainforest Farms, the marijuana depot in downtown Juneau, wants a counter; he’s making an 18-foot-long shelf for Brendan Sullivan’s salon, Salon Cedar. He also works with other entrepreneurs: Adam Dimmitt of local shop Adam’s Bent Metal makes most of the legs for Harris’ tables and benches using a CNC plasma cutter.
In the future, Harris hopes to increase production, but keep his business in Alaska, using local wood. (In addition to owning Aleph Designs, Harris works as staff at the legislature. It’s when the legislature’s not in session that he works on his craft full-time.) Because each piece is unique, he doesn’t anticipate ever doing massive orders of identical pieces, but ideally he’d like to have some employees and to create a few hundred pieces each year.
So far, much of his work has been commissioned. Sometimes people want traditional shapes, but still the live edge aspect; for that, Harris might cut the piece down the middle and turn the edge inside, as with a table on display at The Canvas at REACH, where Aleph Designs is displaying this month, with the symmetrically mirrored live edges centered throughout the table and covered in glass.
Working with live edge and unique pieces of wood takes time. Just under the bark of a tree is a vertical, differently colored strip of wood, and the outer edge can be a silvery-grayish color reminiscent of weathered beach towns.
He doesn’t get upset if a piece of wood cracks, he said, instead focusing on the beauty that anomalies create, pulling them back together with hand-chiseled bow tie splines.
“Aleph Designs offers an amazing story, and I think that’s part of its appeal,” he said. “When I build a table… this is something your grandchildren can have. I’m interested in things that (outlast) our own lives.”
Aleph Designs’ show will be up at the Canvas until July 26.
Aleph Designs’ website is www.alephdesignco.com; Facebook (Aleph Designs) and Instagram (@aleph_designs)
KTOO Broadcasting interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3BecT_K15o
NEC featured as 1 of 12 finalists in Pathway to Prosperity ecopnomic development Program.
TWELVE ENTREPRENEURS COMPETE FOR $40,000 AWARD TO DEVELOP BUSINESS PLANS THROUGH P2P
The Haa Aaní Community Development Fund, Inc. and The Nature Conservancy have partnered for Path to Prosperity (P2P). The goal of P2P is to develop community resiliency by supporting Southeast Alaska entrepreneurs with creating a business plan. This is the third consecutive year for the program.
Path to Prosperity (P2P) announces the12 semi-finalists for 2015 competition.
After a month of deliberation, 12 semi-finalists have been selected and will advance to round two. In round two, semi-finalists have access to business mentors, will participate in a business boot camp weekend, and receive private consulting and development of their business ideas.
Business Name Location Princpal Applicant
1. Alaska Accessible Adventures Juneau Lindsay Halvik
2. AlaskaSmart Biodiesel Hoonah Jeff Hastings
3. Columbine Farm Haines Spencer Douthit
4. Micki’s House Hydaburg Margaret O'Neil
5. Northern Edge Craftworks Juneau Reid Harris
6. Petersburg Indian Association Petersburg Marco Banda
7. Sandbar Bed and Breakfast Metlakatla Karen Thompson
8. Sitka Seedling Farms Sitka Mathew Jackson
9. Skya’ana Coffee Co. Klawock Tina Steffen
10. The Salty Pantry Market and DeliPetersburg Mindy Anderson
11. The Sawmill Farm Sitka Bobbi Daniels
12. Wrangell Cooperative Association Wrangell Aaron Angerman
A total of 28 entrepreneurs applied to Path to Prosperity in 2015. “Thanks to the success of the first two competition cycles, P2P has built momentum across the region,” said Haa Aaní, LLC Director Ed Davis. “It is evident that entrepreneurs across the region are excited about the program given the diverse range of applicants and many applicants have been working on their ideas since last year’s competition.”
Norman Cohen, Southeast Alaska Program Director for The Nature Conservancy, is not surprised at the success the competition has seen. “The abundance of natural resources in Southeast Alaska makes this an incredible workshop for local entrepreneurs interested in finding innovative, sustainable solutions to the region’s challenges,” Cohen said. “These passionate individuals are the ones who will help invigorate our communities and ensure that our local economies thrive.”
Competition administrators and sponsors have introduced improvements to the competition for 2015. “We are lengthening and broadening our 2015 Boot Camp Weekend to provide more resources and support to our 12 semi-finalists as they develop their business concepts,” said Paul Hackenmueller, Haa Aaní, LLC economic development coordinator.
Learn more at www.p2pweb.org.