By Monte Burke | Dec 09/Jan 10 | 

Spin Doctor

Philip Moulthrop turns salvaged wood into art, one bowl at a time

On delivery days, a truck backs up into the Marietta, Georgia, yard of Philip Moulthrop and drops off his logs. They come in all different sizes and types—from the rotund maples to slender mimosas. “I have a network of tree cutters who have to get rid of blown-down or diseased trees,” says the sixty-two-year-old Moulthrop in a soft drawl. “They always call me if they see anything interesting.”

By interesting Moulthrop means those trees with dramatic grains or vivid colors or even those with signs of decay. These logs constitute the raw materials from which he creates exquisite modern art.
Moulthrop is one of the world’s best-known woodturners. His wooden vessels—mostly bowls and platters—show off the natural red, yellow, white, burgundy, and brown colors of the tree’s interior and enhance the grain. His lathe-turned creations are highly evocative, things that were once living seen in a new light. “His works hit this poetic spot between nature and art,” says David McFadden, chief curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, where Moulthrop’s art has often been displayed.

Wood turning came naturally to Philip. His father, Edward, was, according to McFadden, “a landmark figure in the art,” responsible for helping turn what was once considered a craft into a modernist art form. Edward, born in 1916, was a Princeton-trained architect for Robert & Co., an Atlanta firm. There he briefly supervised a young Frank Gehry and designed the Carillon at Stone Mountain and the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. He turned wood as a hobby.

By the 1970s Edward had turned his hobby into a full-blown job. Soon his sleek vessels were featured in the Museum of Modern Art. Edward died in 2003 at the age of eighty-seven. His bowls are more sought after than ever, fetching up to $50,000 at auction.

Philip has carried on the name in style, following his father’s tradition of making bowls with a lustrous finish. His bowls take up to eight months to complete. In his workshop he starts his work with a chain saw and a band saw, getting the logs into workable form. Then he puts a log on his lathe, using a wood gouger to shape the outside into a rounded form. He uses a long-handled hook tool to hollow out the inside. When he gets the wood down to about three-quarters of an inch thick, he cures it with a water-soluble wax, which staves off cracking. Then the bowl is dried for three to four months, depending on the size.

But for every bowl Moulthrop makes the old-fashioned way, he’s also “introduced innovations that have given him his own voice,” says McFadden. Chief among those innovations: his “mosaics,” fantastical pieces that combine traditional wood turning with modern materials. For his mosaics, Moulthrop takes branches from different-colored trees—red cedars, bright yellow mahonias, and white pines—and places them in a five-gallon pail, then pours in a black carbon resin. When the mixture hardens, he removes the pail, then places the block on a lathe and spins and shaves it as if it were a natural log. The result is stunning, since the carbon resin leaves a pitch-black background around the specks of color in the wood.