In Store: City Trees Furniture

In a born-again corner of Ballard, City Trees Furniture reinvents curbside recycling

Photos by Kyle Johnson

It’s not uncommon for free firewood to appear on the curb outside City Trees Furniture. Owner Donald Smith, who has been designing and crafting fine furniture from salvaged wood for almost twenty years, is serious about reusing. Sometimes he collects more wood from fallen, diseased and unwanted urban trees than he can use, so he leaves pieces outside for passersby to make use of.

That’s not the only unusual aspect of this business. The store is housed in a warehouse — painted a throbbing shade of nuclear-waste green — in that strange part of Ballard near Mike’s Chili Parlor that makes you feel like you’ve driven “around the back” of Seattle. Smith has been in the neighborhood for around four years, and City Trees is the first showroom he’s owned.

During our interview, he playfully dons a sparkly paper crown he made at a birthday party, explaining, “A good friend of mine just turned six.” On the front of the crown, his name is spelled out in slightly askew foam letters. Soon after we start our conversation, he seems to forget he is wearing it.

Donald Smith in his showroom at City Trees

While mostly a showroom for Smith’s own handmade furnishings, the City Trees space also serves as rotating gallery for other local artists working in a variety of media, including the politically provocative painter Gary Aagaard and, coming up, the avant-garde collective Slaughterhaus Rose and Nakisha Vanderhooven.

In the vast work and storage space just beyond the showroom, you’ll find an arrested forest: slabs upon slabs of reclaimed walnut and elm, madrone and maple wood leaning against the wall, cut, dried and ready to play a part in one of Smith’s artful pieces, which are inspired by the unique character of the wood he is working with. This makes for a creative and customized shopping process for furniture buyers. Customers can buy completed pieces from the showroom or pick the exact piece of wood they want and collaborate with Smith on the design. This is based on the pattern of the rings, the shape the wood has grown into and whether or not they want a “live edge” (preserving the natural edge of the log), guaranteeing that no two pieces will ever be the same.

Also scattered around the shop is evidence of a process that is easily forgotten when you’re looking at the sleek dining-room tables and shiny wood bowls. There is a wood planer, a pile of chainsaws and a forklift, which Donald frequently drives through the neighborhood to deliver large pieces to his “finishing guy” just a few blocks away. Then there are piles of sawdust (marvelous mountains of curlicue shavings) and stacks of scraps, some of which Smith takes home in the winter because, he jokes, “I burn only the best.”

Coming up: City Trees’ Annual Wood Bowl Show, featuring work by Donald Smith, Dave Thompson, Dan Thoreson and David Earle. Opening during Ballard Artwalk (November 14, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.) and showing through the end of the year.

City Trees Furniture

4616 14th Ave NW; citytreesfurniture.com
206.783.1405. Call for showroom hours