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Furniture made from storm-felled cedar, hand-harvested sap, and salvaged aluminum.
For their first collection, Earth to People started with a material. Pine sap—thick, sticky, and used as glue by early humans tens of thousands of years ago—became the foundation. Founders Jordan and Brittany Weller were drawn not just to its function, but to what it stood for: a slower way of making, where every step is deliberate and the materials shape the outcome.
The debut collection, titled Salvage & Sap, includes a dining chair, armchair, side table, stool, and a small series of lighting and wall pieces. At first glance, the work is simple: chunky planes of cedar, joined with wooden dowels and hand-heated resin, paired with thin sheets of salvaged aluminum. There are no synthetic glues. No dyes. No kiln-dried wood. Instead, there’s air-dried timber from trees that fell naturally, aluminum sourced from a local recycling depot, and handwoven bark cordage used as structural stitching in the lighting pieces. The upholstery—organic hemp and cotton canvas—is left undyed, and the cushions are filled with cedar shavings saved from the shaping process. The Sap Chair, the first design in the series, is built from three intersecting slabs of 400-year-old red cedar. The lines are sharp, but the joinery and proportions keep it grounded. The armchair, released soon after, shares the same approach, but adds a softened profile and a supported seat of bent aluminum. There’s no flourish—just enough structure to hold its form and enough space to show how it was made.
The sap is harvested slowly—not by tapping the trees or cutting into them, but by collecting what has already surfaced and hardened. It’s then melted over heat, strained, and brushed into place—serving as both a binding agent and a material story. The cedar is air-dried, not kiln-dried, on the banks of the Mamquam Blind Channel in British Columbia. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is hidden. Since that first chair, Earth to People has expanded the line with more sculptural pieces—wall-mounted works, a tall lamp with a bark-wrapped base, and a pair of tables that are slightly more expressive but still rooted in the same logic. The forms are heavier now, a little more gestural, but the material choices haven’t changed. The process hasn’t either. Founded in 2023 in the Catskills, with roots in New York, Texas, and British Columbia, the studio works without a manifesto or a catchphrase—just a desire to make things that are honest, low-impact, and built to last.
Photography by James Han
