Diving into the beauty and durability of cherry hardwood.
By Jill Butterworth
Natural materials are having a resurgence inside the home.
Some refer to this movement as quiet luxury or organic modern design, but thumb through any design publication and you're bound to see wood-layering inside kitchens and living rooms. The cool, gray tones of the 2010s are being replaced with the color and warmth of natural materials.
After a long stretch of custom orders for projects with black walnut and white oak, the workshop recently received a few requests for projects made with edge-grain cherry wood. I was only familiar with the look of cherry cabinets from the 90s and early aughts and in BirchBarn's Cole Cutting Boards. I was really curious how cherry would look as a surface top.
Without even digging, I spotted a feature this week on my feed of Mr. Bravo and fellow deadhead Andy Cohen showing off his Hamptons Beach house in Architectural Digest.
I immediately noticed that his kitchen is almost entirely wood and that the centerpiece is an island that appears to be cherry. Designed by Jackie Greenberg, a celebrity designer with a strong focus on art and character-rich spaces, there is wood everywhere and the intent seems to be natural materials as a complement to the ocean views outside the window. Color and material over direct and obvious references to the sea.
The project underway in the BirchBarn workshop is an edge-grain cherry countertop. This is a style of butcher block where continuous strips of solid wood are turned on their sides and glued together to expose the narrow edge of the wood. This method is partly for aesthetics as it creates this visually-striking tonal variation but it also makes a more durable surface since the wood's narrow side-grain is stronger than the face-grain. The picture below is a walnut edge-grain countertop BirchBarn did a few years ago.
The Scituate client who ordered the cherry countertops was inspired to use this particular wood on Birchbarn founder and head woodworker Matt Swanson's recommendation, but also because the older home he's renovating has cherry trim throughout the house. The cabinetry, he said, is grayish green and I immediately could picture the warmth of the cherry tones matched with an earthy color like muted green.
Fresh cherry wood starts surprisingly light, then gradually deepens over time with UV exposure into cognac and honey tones. It's a wood that shifts and changes just like we do.
"Cherry is my absolute favorite wood," said Shelley Swanson, BirchBarn co-owner. "I love the movement in the grain compared to other woods. The rich golden hue falls into a perfect balance right in between oak and walnut. To me it has the most graceful grain pattern."
If you have an idea for a custom wood project, send us your ideas and we will get you a quote. And if you want to see Andy's Cohen's wood-drenched beach house, check it out in Architectural Digest.
