Editor’s Miscellany: Winter Trees

By Kyle Hoepner

Cast your gaze out of a New England window and you’ll almost certainly see trees. This time of year, however, they won’t be those soft, shaggy clouds of rustling green that most likely come to mind when you think of trees. Right now they’re more likely to resemble gnarled, arthritic hands scrabbling to drag down snow from the lowering sky. You won’t see leaves; you’ll see bark, and perhaps the raw stump of an ice-snapped branch.

Winter trees, though, have their own somber, ascetic sort of beauty. As does bark itself. So here are some designs that bring that winter bark inside.

Bedroom by designer Stephen Sills with bark wallcovering from Caba Company.
Photo by Nikolas Koenig, from the January 2013 issue of Architectural Digest

Oxidized aluminum bark vases from Michael Aram

Bark painting by Joan Backes. (Click here for more about Backes and her work.)

Jurgen Bey’s Tree-Trunk Bench, available through Droog

Frosted Bark wallpaper by Threads at Lee Jofa

Diagram of Cornus florida (flowering dogwood) bark, from Dripps + Phinney Studio

Traditional bark cloth from Uganda. Photo from barkcloth.de

Chest with inset drawers wrapped in Honduran bark cloth,
from Schreinerei Galerie Meister-HS

Rustica pendant light from Studio Jota