Drake regularly travels to China, where he inspects 400-year-old elm from the Ming Dynasty. Moving through the market in Guangzhou, bargaining through an interpreter with peasants who, in some cases, have transported prized logs from their villages 300 or 400 miles away, he’s been known to tote duffle bags stuffed with yuan. “They would stop loading the timbers if I didn’t pay.”
Recently, he’s been spending time in the dead oak forests of Germany and France. “What’s left by loggers in these forests is so majestic and so beautiful,” he says. “A dead tree with wormholes shows much more character, and as the lumber dries, it develops these stains, which to me give it an incredible look.”
An active supporter of a variety of conservation and reforestation initiatives, including the American Chestnut Foundation and Building Goodness, Mountain Lumber has been awarded the Forest Stewardship Council’s chain of custody certification by the Rainforest Alliance, which verifies that the firm’s reclaimed, solid flooring products are made 100 percent from recycled materials. “There are so many different products we can re-use, and we just haven’t made it a priority,” Drake says. “Look at Europe: They’ve been reworking old materials and practicing sustainable use of products for years. It’s about time we made it a priority.”
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