STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Doug Tedrow can’t make a simple piece of furniture.
He embellishes his rustic elegant pieces, chiseling out counters to look like buffalo hide. He carves a Navajo rug pattern on three drawers on a hutch, finishing it off with a secret hiding place in one of the drawers.
Tedrow’s created a hutch where a knocker inside a tortoise shell sounds like a rattler when the drawer is pulled out. Pull out a drawer on his desk and you’ll find it supported by old bottle caps.
“Some people make the same thing over and over. I say it doesn’t take long to get boring and stale if you keep doing the same thing,” said Tedrow, who majored in art at the University of Utah.
Tedrow has NOT been doing the same thing for 24 years—ever since he moved to Sun Valley from Southern California in search of a peaceful paradise without the constant racket of sirens and boom boxes.
A construction supervisor in Southern California, he had a hunch he could make a living building rustic furniture and teepee furniture for Sun Valley’s log homes which, he notes, often resemble mansions more than cabins.
The first piece he made was a stacked log chair created like a log cabin with the bigger logs on top.
A woman building a 21,000-square-foot home saw that and ordered six pieces of furniture for her home, as well as 20 patio pieces, including stump stools and end tables with the Union Pacific logo. Then she asked him to embellish her fireplace with stacked logs and crossed willow sticks and her doors with willow sticks crossed over frosted glass.
Others took notice. Tedrow won Best Woodworking Craftsmanship, Best Western Spirit, Best of Show and Excellence in Design at Western Design conferences.
His work was featured in eight coffee table books, including five of Ralph Kylloe’s treatises on rustic living. And his pieces made their way into more than a dozen magazines, including “Big Sky Journal” and “American Cowboy.”
That led to more orders for cupboards, desks and stair railings.
“He does good work. Just look at what he did in the Pioneer Saloon,” said former Ketchum Mayor Ed Simon, referring to the saloon’s back bar.
Tedrow’s so-called 1,500-square foot cave in Ketchum’s 10th Street light industrial area is a testament to his motto, “There’s no such thing as too much stuff.”
A plastic marlin lies on top of his father’s 1924 Lincoln beneath old railroad signs, lanterns, antique bicycle and antlers that people leave on the doorstep of his workplace.
His office sports an upright piano and a baby grand buried under ice cream scoops, potato graters, horseshoes, Seminole Indian dolls, Safari hats, Saturday Evening Posts and other trinkets.
Lodgepole and willow sticks hang in the rafters above piles of tires, blacksmith tools, and trophy heads he’s bought at various places.
After years of building furniture, Tedrow is beginning to branch out into other things.
He’s begun, for instance, to create rustic elegant lamps. And, then, just for fun he’s begun to create modern steam punk lamps out of old barbecue propane tanks that are past their reusable stage, adorning them with air pressure gauges and other found items. Or, as Tedrow puts it, “junk that somebody’s discarded.”
“Creating things is what I call making the world a better place,” he said. “That’s what artists do—they create things of beauty that did not exist before.”
He recently began creating raven’s heads out of clay that can be turned over to emulate pipes. And several months ago he began making bells, which he said can be used as meditation bells, dinner bells or “come-for-wine” bells
The bells, which are suitable for patios, can hold candles underneath, or plants, which he says thrive on the vibrations of the bell.
“I like that they’re recycled or upcycled. And I like the modern aesthetic,” said Brandy Herold, who carries a few bells at Huck and Paddle in Ketchum. Other stores that have carried Tedrow creations include Steve Eich Art and Antiques in Ketchum and Lone Star in Hailey.
Building things like bells is simply a way for Tedrow to stay excited about creating.
“As I get older I want to work in smaller mediums,” he said. “Some of my furniture weighs a hundred pounds, and it’s a lot of work going out cutting logs, hauling logs and stacking them. Plus, I always like to be experimenting. That’s why I’m beginning to work with metal, instead of wood. Working with clay, instead of metal…”