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 our history—how we got started, and how we ended up where we are today. Thank you guys for taking the time to read this. It’s not in our nature to talk about ourselves or in any way brag about our accomplishments. We hope this doesn’t come across that way. Thank you so much for engaging with us on social media, and, most of all, thank you for your (almost) decade-long support. We wouldn’t be here without you. *** We are Kris and Kelley Denby, a husband and wife team, living and creating in Austin, Texas. We started Hemlock & Heather in...
Over the last few years, discussions about our business and our creative lives have begun to turn to the topic of Next Chapters. We had (and continue to have) a lot of ideas and ambitions within and outside of Hemlock & Heather, but throughout those conversations a definitive theme began to emerge: A need for community and a sense of belonging among us small business owners. As entrepreneurs, we often feel like we are on an island. Our problems (and there are many) seem unique to us. And the solutions? Well, the internet is full of information, but it’s not always obvious how to tell the good info from the useless. We realized that one of the things we look...
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...
