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Woodworks picks up the pace By Sean Wolfe Ashland Daily Tidings Talent-based Green Mountain Woodworks owner Mark Stella wants to get native hardwoods into good homes. So far, he's getting his line of hardwood flooring, paneling, stair steps and butcher blocks into a variety of showrooms all over the West Coast - but until recently, there was no place in Ashland to get a look at his products. A deal with Ashland-based Designwise Studios changed all that. It's the first Ashland-based showroom for Stella's work. Until now, people who wanted to see his line of native hardwood flooring had to trek to his Talent-based manufacturing facility. "Designwise had just moved into their new location, and they have such an amazing gallery - tile, marble, stone, bamboo flooring - I just thought it would be a natural fit," Stella said. "Nine times out of ten, we ask our customers to show up at the warehouse to look at samples. Obviously, that isn't that great a location. Customers don't necessarily want to make decisions about their floors surrounded by piles of wood that's colored pink by mercury-vapor lamps - it's less than ideal. With Designwise, a homeowner or a designer can walk in and look at great-looking wood in a great space. And having an Ashland location is vital." Designwise Studio recently opened its new location at 215 4th Street. The new gallery - despite a few areas still under construction - epitomizes the Hemingway phrase of "a clean, well-lighted place." Customers enter the gallery walk on an elaborate mosaic floor, and can browse Tellini's impressive collection of handmade tiles, Italian marble, glass, bamboo and other materials for floors, walls and countertops. "Mark does such beautiful work - and we felt his stuff just fit right in with our design lines," noted Designwise owner Pat Tellini. Tellini said she gets a lot of customers, including homeowners, architects and interior designers. "People are always looking for something that's a little unusual, sometimes a little higher-end when they're building a new home, or remodeling. So what we try to do is bring in the widest array of options we can find. We mostly specialize in things that aren't shiny - things that feel warm, things that feel touchable. And people really respond favorably to that," Tellini said. According to Stella, environmentally-minded people also respond as much to the quality of his hardwoods as they do to their origin. As a matter of policy, Stella has committed Green Mountain to offering products that are sustainably harvested. The timber he uses are certified by agents of the Forest Stewardship Council - a group that formed in 1993 to develop environmentally sustainable forest practices, as well as a labeling scheme similar to that of the organic label for foods. Typically, timbers are harvested from small landholders throughout the Pacific Northwest. Some are from forests that have been harvested by restoration efforts, while others are reclaimed and remilled from salvaged timber. Every stick of wood in Stella's shop is tagged with its source, and how it was harvested, so customers - and Stella - can be well-informed about the origins and harvesting practices that went into their purchase. "Conscientious consumers want to know that what they're doing with their home or office isn't contributing to the world's problems. By only offering certified timber, we can offer them assurances, and they can enjoy their new floor - or any of our products - with a clear conscience," Stella said. Now in its eighteenth month of operation, Stella said his company is picking up momentum. Eight showrooms, including galleries in Seattle, San Francisco, See WOODWORKS, Page 3 and Lake Tahoe, feature his lines, and he's working on expanding that list to 24 galleries by the end of the year. Stella's list of contractors is growing as well, and that's led Stella to seriously consider expanding his product line. Currently, Stella's mainstays are products that find themselves underfoot. The company offers flooring, paneling, stair steps from a variety of hardwoods native to the Pacific Northwest like madrone, big leaf maple, cherry, beech and alder. Costs for the flooring range from the low end of $3.50 to $5.00 per square foot for big leaf maple, to $4.80 to $6.50 per square foot for madrone. "We're doing butcher blocks right now - and that's been very popular. We're also looking at making toys, and eventually furniture - anything we can do to add value to the wood," Stella said. While toymaking may seem like a departure from his core business, Stella said it's the logical and respectful thing to do with scrapwood. "Why waste anything? You have this tree - it's a beautiful material. So why waste any part of it? It's also a great way to introduce kids to thinking about where their toys come from," Stella said. While toymaking may never be a central line for Green Mountain, in a way it completes a journey for Stella, who got his first taste of working with wood when was a student in a middle school shop class. He made a wooden car as part of a class assignment, and received high marks. This past Christmas, Stella revisited that achievement, making two wooden cars from recycled redwood for his two sons. Prior to forming Green Mountain, Stella worked as an industrial designer in Seattle, designing high-tech toys for Apple Computer, Hewlett Packard and other Fortune 500s. He said he tired of that lifestyle, and wanted to work on something that was closer to his values. "It was the right time to do something new, and creating a market for timber that is sustainably harvested was a cause I could get my head around," Stella said. 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