Beginnings Hemlock & Heather had existed for about a month in August 2012 when Kelley and I dreamt this headboard up. This piece came about because Kelley had a family quilt that was falling apart, and she had the idea to recreate the pattern in wood. One weekend while she was away, I went into the garage and started trying to bring it to life. I used some reclaimed beaded oak that was given to me by a remodeler back when I was working in the building industry. I spent all weekend in the garage working on that headboard. The star pattern consisted of 96 parallelograms that had to be individually cut and laid in place. But I loved the...
To celebrate 9 years in business, we thought it would be fun (interesting?) to take a look back at some of our past designs, discuss how they came about, and maybe drag a few of them out of the vault—for a limited time, of course! These were the very first pieces of ours that weren’t strictly one-of-a-kinds. In 2016, in order to build the 28’ Waterloo we designed and built for West Elm Austin, we had to find a wood supplier. We knew we weren’t gonna scrounge that much wood. So we found a little local company called This Old Wood. Securing a reliable source for wood (a specific type with a reasonably consistent patina) changed things dramatically for our...
Before the world shut down last spring, we were in the middle of a collaboration with Topo Chico to do a large Topo-inspired Texas for their booth at Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion. We were psyched about it. Not only because of the opportunity to partner up with such a beloved brand here in Texas, but also because we were going to get to attend the event (and Kelley REALLY wanted to attend Luck Reunion). And because the people we were working with over at Topo were just amazing partners. But then pandemic… And, well, you know the rest. But we’re not here to whine about that. We knew we would come back to the colab eventually, so we just tucked...
