Hearth Bench

We have a rustic pine bench that sits in front of our hearth. It's a cherished object that provides a perch to roast marshmallows over glowing embers, or just a handy spot to sit and lace up your boots. The bench is heavily constructed of southern yellow pine and the top is a full three inches thick. It was made by my wife's grandfather who as a South Carolina contractor worked on many civic and municiple buildings. The bench top is made from a beam pulled from a building that was demolished. Blackened nail holes are still visible from the floor boards that spanned across it in a first life as a structural building element. This simple bench is valued not only because it was made by a family member and passed down as an heirloom, but also for its rugged construction, enduring the long years without failure and aquiring an amber patina along the way. I also love the aspects of the bench that give clues about its former lives, first as a living tree and then as a building beam. I can count eighty four tightly spaced growth rings in the bench top that was surely cut from a much larger log. We have some idea of its age as a bench, but who knows how long it served as a beam or who may have walked over its span. Who knows if it was harvested from a cultivated hedgerow or felled in a primeval wilderness and floated downriver to a sawmill. I like to think about these things and I've used the old bench as an inspiration for my own hearth benches.


  I've chosen to use walnut for the bench top, allowing the shape of the tree to remain, with lighter sap wood contrasting with the heartwood. The legs are white oak, split with a froe so the wood fibers remain aligned and joined to the top with a tapered tenon and wedge.Thanks for your interest.