Celebrity custom woodworker Corbin Clay has gained fame in the industry since winning Kettle One and GQ Magazine’s Gentleman’s Call award in 2013. Featured in the Wall Street Journal and in the publications of Woodworking Network, Clay also has been a top draw at major woodworking industry shows including AWFS and Cabinets and Closets Expo.
Visitors to the 2014 Cabinets & Closets Expo April 9-11 at the Garden City Convention Center in Somerset, NJ, can once again meet Clay, who will be demonstrating joinery techniques. His visit is sponsored by Festool, and he will appear in the Eveready Hardware booth.
Making the Best of the Blues
Launched in 2009, Clay’s Denver-based company, Azure Furniture, creates custom furniture from beetle killed pine wood, which has a blue tinge. He sells this furniture in an online store, with pieces ranging from $309 for an end table to $1,199 for a dining table. He also sells cabinets, bookcases and media storage furniture, and exterior siding of blue pine.
In the heart of the area devastated by the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation, Clay can buy approximately 5,000 board feet of lumber per month that has been milled to his exact specifications.
He says 100 percent of the beetle-kill pine used in his production is Colorado-sourced, mostly from the surrounding Summit and Grand counties.
Clay takes the milled lumber, and after verifying proper moisture content, mills selectively glued-up blanks that are 8 feet long. His line of furniture is all built based upon a 96Ë module.
Wood finishes and powder coating are both formaldehyde-free. Low-VOC coatings are allowed to completely off-gas before shipping. Laminates are developed from recycled paper, and applied to surfaces with Greenguard certified adhesives.
Clay’s innovative approach and media savvy also lead to his opening a pop-up retail store in a downtown Denver, CO, mall last year.
Azure’s team built pine-beetle furniture on site for retail sale. Festool helped sponsor the project in which Clay built a 12’ x 12’ pergola at the “Garden Block” (16th St., between Curtis and Champa). It remains in place as a public installation.
Several wood products were available for under $100. The company sold coasters, cutting boards, a bicycle shelf, and furnishings from its mountain pine beetle killed lumber designs.
All of the furniture was made live using his Festool Domino XL.
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