Keaton Freeman makes audio components out of Seattle's salvaged wood

Keaton Freeman alongside his audio components at ICFF

Keaton Freeman was pulling double duty at last week’s 2018 ICFF furniture fair at New York’s Javits Center.

As the senior woodworker for Seattle’s Urban Hardwoods, Freeman was exhibiting the company’s handcrafted, one-of-a-kind salvaged wood furniture, sourced from Northwest neighborhoods, then locally milled, dried, designed and fabricated.

“Because of the climate in Seattle, trees grow fast and big—and fall in windstorms or because of Dutch elm disease,” said Freeman. “We work with the city, which cuts trees down if they’re hazardous or dying and need to be removed.”

But Freeman is also the founder of his own free-muhn-forms wood design company, and showed his wooden audio amplifiers and loudspeakers—also made from salvaged wood.

“I took scraps of wood from an old building,” said Freeman, who bleached and whitewashed walnut and fir in creating his audio components—color-contrasting them with red fabric-covered speaker wires. A record collector, he sought a “really clean look,” and sure enough, his amplifier shows only a barely noticeably wooden volume knob (with like bass and treble controls to come) and when it’s turned on, a tiny indicator light.

“The response at the show was overwhelming,“ said Freeman.