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Flourtown business turns damaged trees and discarded materials into high-end furniture
John Duffy started Stable Tables to fill a need for customized, local tables. He makes them from fallen trees, reclaimed lumber and wood from old houses and barns. (Photography by Milton Lindsay) 
Trees with damage from insects or fungi are preferable for making uniquely beautiful tables. (Photography by Milton Lindsay)
By Claire Marie Porter
It’s the imperfect trees that make a beautiful piece of furniture for John Duffy of Stable Tables.
“I don’t really consider myself an artist or anything like that,” Duffy explains. “I’m more of a business person.”
Stable Tables, he says, began after he bought a table from a carpenter in Maryland and had to wait out a 14-week backlog to get it. He saw a need for handcrafted tables that were customizable, and locally made. He adds that he was an executive telecom operator, and was looking for something else to do.
“My [real estate business] partner is the one who really helped me get started,” says Duffy, referring to Chris English, a carpenter by trade. “He’s a general contractor and can make anything.”
Duffy, on the other hand, got his start making tables in 2003.
“The first table I made for Stable Tables was the first table I ever made,” he says.
The company mainly sells tables and countertops, but Duffy says it occasionally also makes benches, tables for conference rooms and desks as well as side tables and coffee tables.
The wood is mostly salvaged, and comes from trees felled by storms, age, or disease; old buildings or barns; and salvage companies — most of which would otherwise end up in a landfill.
There are enough trees dying from
natural causes that there is no reason to buy trees from a mill that are being harvested, Duffy says. Most are fallen, some are dead, and occasionally a developer might be cutting down trees after someone bought land and is trying to clear it.
The table bases are also made of salvaged material. One of his favorite materials, unique to Stable Tables, is made from the sifter of a mulch grinder, a heavy piece of metal that resembles a Connect Four game board. Repurposed scaffolding, old porch posts, and cast iron knitting table legs, are some of the other materials used.
Customers want things that are unusual, says Duffy, with custom sizes and custom finishes. They may have already been to a restoration furniture store and found they can’t get exactly what they want.
“Live edge” tables are a specialty that is in high demand, where the wood’s edge isn’t sanded straight, but left with its
natural curves.
Book-matching is another method Stable Tables uses, which involves placing two pieces cut from the same tree, one after another, joining them side-by-side with the grain aligned so that they create a mirror image of each other. The result is eye-catching and highly desirable.
Over time, Stable Tables has evolved from building rustic to more contemporary-style furniture.
“I don’t really make things your grandmother would have,” says Duffy. Adding that customers often think they want something rustic, when what they really have in mind is actually quite modern.
There is no cheating when it comes to the process of making a table. It’s a long process that requires properly curing wood. When a mill first gets a log, it has to sit in log form for one year per inch, in order to properly air dry. Then, it can go into a kiln.
The best tables are usually the most damaged trees, says Duffy. The company’s most supportive business partners are insects and fungi.
“I look for wood that’s already got crazy stuff going on in it,” he says.
For example, maple is not a not a very exciting wood, says Duffy. It’s just a plain light brown, usually used for painting or staining. But a lot of maples tend to die from either mushrooms or a bug that bores into the plant tissue causing clusters of inky black spots.
“They do really cool things to the wood,” says Duffy.
The mushrooms cause “spalting,” a wood coloration that resembles tiger stripes. It can be found in dead trees or live trees with many mushrooms attached.
“In the case of maple it enhances the way the wood looks,” says Duffy.
But the mill has to know about the timing of spalting. The wood can’t sit too long. It’s like aging a grape.
“Because if it goes too far, the wood gets all punky and soft and it can’t be used,” says Duffy.
Currently, Stable Tables is comprised of two full-time employees and one part-time employee. And it will stay that way, according to Duffy.
“I enjoy it because I don’t have a lot of people working for me,” he says. “I’ll never make the money I could make, because I want to build stuff; I don’t want to manage people.”
Duffy is involved in the making of each and every table, whether this means picking up, cutting, or mining the wood; building or sanding the tables; or dropping off the resulting wood scraps, which they donate to wood shops at local schools.
“I want to know what that table is going to look like at the end,” he says. “I’m very hands-on.”
His greatest satisfaction comes from choosing a wood that’s so unique and beautiful, it just needs a good presentation, then “people look at it and think: ‘that’s art.’”
He’s in the sweet spot for a small business, he says.
“I’m happy every day,” says Duffy. “I sleep well.”
These talented black women have had extraordinary side gigs
Celestine Wilson Hughes works as both a bus driver and a stained glass artist. (Photography by Kriston Jae Bethel) 
Lynne Suzette Carter just retired from a career as a supervisor within the Philadelphia Streets Department; she also works as a professional judge of boxing matches. (Photography by Kriston Jae Bethel)
By Constance Garcia-Barrio
Devaluing black women’s work is a holdover from slavery time. It often cuts our employment opportunities, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank focused on economic issues.
The view prevails that women of African ancestry should go on being “…de mule uh de world…” as the acid pen of Harlem Renaissance author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) put it. This disregard can not only limit career choices but also slash earnings.
“Black women in the U.S. are typically paid 61 cents for every dollar paid to white men,” states a 2018 study by the American Association of University Women, a nonprofit group working for equity for women and girls.
Nevertheless, two local black women have beat the odds. Both have had secondary careers that are truly remarkable.
“I never thought I’d get my commercial driver’s license,” says Celestine Wilson Hughes, 71, who’s driven a school bus for the School District of Philadelphia for years. “It was traditionally men’s work, and I love that I have the skill.”
Hughes credits an excellent instructor for helping her meet the challenge. Her routes wind through South Philly as well as Darby, where she lives; she drives a bus for that school district, too.
The work entails more than steering buses that weigh up to 13 tons.
“You have the responsibility to be the best person you can be with children,” says Hughes, who has a grown son and a granddaughter. “You greet each child by name, look them in the eye and smile. You make a connection.”
Hughes also stays observant.
“You pay attention to whether the child’s clothes are clean or dirty, whether the child is hungry, whether he or she smells like urine,” she says.
If children misbehave, Hughes gives them extra attention.
“Children may not have words to say something’s wrong,” she says. “All they can do is act out.”
The downtime between ferrying children to and from school lets Hughes prep for her second career, that of stained glass artist. She wraps the small pieces of glass she’s cut for use in her creations in copper foil—a process that hurts her fingers—and later solders the pieces together.
Her colorful sculptures have appeared in many places, including the African American Museum, the Free Library of Philadelphia on Logan Circle and Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, Tennessee.
Hughes tiptoed onto Philly’s arts scene.
“First, I painted T-shirts with my own designs,” says Hughes, who was raising her son as a single mother at the time. “I had to let the paint on the shirts dry, then I embroidered them for a three-dimensional effect. Once, when they were drying outside, someone stole every one of them.”
Hughes also made jewelry and vivid wooden figures. In her late 40s, she began working with stained glass after a friend persuaded her to come along to a workshop.
“I made a small glass boat, and I knew I’d found a home,” Hughes recalls.
Hughes has gained fame for her exuberant black female figures. They have broad hips, big butts, generous lips, and, sometimes, a heart-shaped womb.
“Children don’t have to look twice at one of my figures to know it represents a black person,” she says. “In my childhood because of systemic racism I saw few black images. Their absence conveyed unworthiness and acted as silent indoctrination. My art celebrates who we are as a people.”
Philadelphia native Lynne Suzette Carter, sixty-something, has also used smarts and drive to forge a satisfying work life.
Soon after graduating from Cardinal Dougherty High School, she began working as a clerk and typist in the Philadelphia Streets Department. Over the course of her 39 years there, she held many positions, including computer support specialist. By the time she retired this June, she had risen to supervisor of the unit that oversees removal of “bandit” signs, those that mar the cityscape because they’re left up indefinitely.
While in the Streets Department, Carter also launched a second career that took her into a male preserve: she became a professional judge of boxing matches.
“What happened was, my first boyfriend and his brothers liked to see boxing matches,” she says. “They took me along and realized that I usually made the same call as the referees. I picked the winner. They said, ‘You’re pretty good!’”
Carter decided to become a judge, but ran up against nay-sayers aplenty.
“The State Athletic Commission told me that it was no job for a woman, but I kept on,” she says.
She asked boxing superstar Joe Frazier (1944–2011) for help. Frazier’s secretary persuaded him to see Carter. “When I asked him to train me, he said, ‘I don’t like judges and I don’t like referees.’ He tested me by asking what I thought of a certain well-known boxer.”
As Carter drew breath to praise the boxer, Frazier’s secretary made a discreet thumbs down sign, so Carter said that boxer wasn’t so hot.
“Then Joe Frazier said, ‘Okay, I’ll train you,’” she says.
Carter went to Frazier’s gym three or four times a week.
“He made me get in the ring and throw punches,” says Carter of Frazier, world heavyweight champ from 1970-1973. Carter spent hours at ringside, learning and scoring. By March 1982, she had become a professional judge in Pennsylvania. Next, she set her sights on Atlantic City, a boxing hub.
“I had to train all over again with Jersey Joe Walcott,” a 1950s heavyweight champion, she recalls.
By 1982, she was officiating down the shore.
Meanwhile, Carter continued to work for the Streets Department.
“I could do it because boxing matches basically take place on the weekends,” she says.
She also made strategic use of her vacation time, personal days, annual leave and comp time so she could judge fights. Carter has judged boxing matches not only in the U.S. but in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.
“When I officiated in South Africa, I got to go on safari and into villages. Boxing has been good to me,” says Carter.
In the pursuit of both their careers and passions, each woman found a winning formula.
“I decided what I wanted to do and I just kept going,” Carter says.
And Hughes, likewise.
“If you’re committed to accomplishing something,” Hughes says, “the universe will bring you what you need.”
Insect viewing parties spark curiosity and empathy for otherwise invisible creatures
By Bernard Brown
A white sheet strung up between two trees in Bartram’s Garden glowed blue in the dark August night. It was speckled with hundreds of insects, ranging in size from tiny wasps and midges, whose identity could only be discerned with a magnifying glass, to geometer moths an inch-and-a-half across.
A small crowd of children and adults pointed and leaned in closer to look, highlighting interesting critters with flashlight beams. LJ Brubaker, the garden’s communications manager, slipped around the craning necks and pointing fingers to call out newly-arrived bugs and answer questions from the human visitors.
More than 50 people had registered for the “Moth Night” at Bartram’s Garden. A parade and “glow party” earlier in the evening had drawn 600 people, and many of the moth watchers at the sheet sported face paint and glow rings.
Bartram’s Garden has been hosting moth nights for at least four years, according to its lead gardener Mandy Katz. In addition to setting up the sheet, Katz painted trees with a homemade mix of molasses, brown sugar, banana, and Hamm’s Beer to attract moths looking for a meal. Ken Frank, local naturalist and author of The Ecology of Center City Philadelphia, set up another sheet and blacklight downhill from the first.
Katz, Frank and Brubaker identified some of the moths with the help of a guidebook. An inch-long, fuzzy, orange moth called a white-pointed prominent hung out toward the bottom of the sheet.
A few dogbane tiger moths, white with orange on their heads and the leading edges of their wings, sat for a while surrounded by midges. A small “bird dropping” moth looked exactly like what its name implied.
However, many of the moths could only be identified to the family level before they flew away. The humans faced the same challenges with other insects at the sheet and the bait stations, such as click beetles (family Elateridae), and caddisflies (order Trichoptera).
If it seems odd that insect enthusiasts encountered species that they couldn’t identify, consider that there are more than 2,100 moth species documented in Pennsylvania. (Butterfly enthusiasts have a much easier time with around 160.) Factor in all the thousands of other flying insect species that could be attracted to a light at night, and a moth night serves as a humbling introduction to the mind boggling diversity of insects, even in an urban park.
Bartram’s Garden isn’t the only place hosting such get togethers.
The Woodlands hosted its Bat and Moth Nature Night in mid-August, partnering with the Academy of Natural Sciences and Temple’s Sewall Lab, according to Emma Max, The Woodlands’ program and operations manager. The event “focuses on bats and moths because they are an important part of our cemetery environment and our urban ecosystem,” Max says.
You can also observe moths on your own schedule.
“Finding moths can be as simple as leaving a porch light on and checking it after dark,” according to the website of National Moth Week (July 20-28, 2019). Adding a sheet gives moths an easily observable place to land, and a blacklight can bring in moths attracted to ultraviolet light.
Professional researchers use similar techniques. Stephen C. Mason, Jr. a PhD candidate and graduate research associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, uses light traps in the New Jersey Pine Barrens to study how insect populations respond to forest fires.
For the best results, according to Mason, find the darkest location you can on a moonless night to avoid light competition. Although no one is sure why lights draw nocturnal insects, the leading hypothesis, according to Mason, is that artificial light imitates the moon, which moths and many other insects use to help orient themselves.
Our bug neighbors need our help. As researchers have documented, fewer and fewer insects are sharing our nights with us. A study in Germany found that in protected areas flying insect biomass, the total weight of all insects, had decreased by more than 75% in 27 years.
To start, we can ditch bug zappers (which kill mostly harmless bugs and very few of the targeted mosquitoes) and garden insecticides, and fill our gardens with native plants that host native insects. And, of course, events like moth nights can help muster sympathy for otherwise ignored or reviled critters.
“Moths are part of life we don’t really pay attention to,” says Ruben Alexis, who hung around for Bartram’s moth night after initially coming for the glow party. “But here, we put them on display on a canvas.”
Grid Magazine 