TORONTO - Is it possible to make a solid wood bathtub out of a single three-ton mass of wood, without glue or epoxy? And can it be done sustainably?
"The general consensus is you can't even make a kitchen cabinet out of solid wood let alone a nearly 6-feet diameter bathtub," says Jonathan Kitzen of Timber Neutral, a Leiceister, U.K., studio which fashioned the tubs for Toronto retailer Amelie & Max. The big concern was, "Will it hold water?
Conventional wisdom holds that the wood will crack from uneven drying, and it could be too unstable, moving and twisting on location. But a similar wood project has been around for hundreds of years: the dugout canoe, which is water tight and floats despite many cracks and fissures.
Timber Neutral says there is something within the fiber of wood that no other material can capture - the vitality and uniqueness of an organic object. The tubs are said to be the fusion of high-tech craftsmanship and the originality and form of solid wood. Each is made from a solid, single 6,600-lb. block of wood that has been painstakingly carved down to create a two-person tub, with no two alike. Amelie & Max retail the tubs for $34,000.
Each bath is also given an individual identification, bearing the personalized name of a tree, reflecting both the personality of the bath and its exotic origin.
The trees, harvested in Columbian forests, must be very large to yield such a large block of wood, so Timber Neutral goes to lengths to make the case that the harvesting is sustainable.
"Few trees, perhaps one out of a million, grow to the massive size needed for the tubs," says Kitzen.
Trees are cut down, then pulled from the forest with a horse team before arriving at Timber Neutral's workshop. Each is then carefully designed based on the structure of the wood block. After a two-month process, the tub is complete, then left to dry for three years to slowly age and harden the wood, yielding a "one-off" product that can never ever be duplicated.
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