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GreenWood trains artisans to make high-quality wood products, adding value to forest resources and creating incentives to protect biodiversity.
We foster self-sufficiency by promoting sustainable forest management, the use of lesser-known species, inspired designs, skilled hand-tool production and access to markets.
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LATEST NEWS:
PlanetShifter.Com Interviews GreenWood President
Launching the New Year and a new decade, PlanetShifter.com founder Willi Paul posted an interview on January 4, 2010, with GreenWood President Scott Landis, entitled "The Sustainable Heart in GreenWoodGlobal.org: Timber-Tracking to Furniture Making." PlanetShifter is a "think tank for cutting edge green news" and, along with its companion eMagazine, GreenCatcherUnion.com, the website provides a green portal for artists, musicians, writers and inventors from around the world to post their work and exchange ideas.
Go to: www.planetshifter.com/node/1458
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Yanesha Scorp: Reinventing Traditional Tools in the Amazon
A new GreenWood tool is changing the way Yanesha carvers in the Peruvian Amazon are attacking their work. Observing the limitations of the traditional, curved hand adze, which is difficult to control and sharpen and leaves a roughly textured surface, GreenWood mentor, Brian Boggs, set about reinventing the wheel. The sculptor's adze has been in use since at least the Bronze Age, but Brian hasn't met a tool or technology he wasn't tempted to refine. A preeminent chairmaker and designer in Asheville, North Carolina, Brian has patented designs for such venerable woodworking instruments as the spokeshave and the shaving horse. At a GreenWood workshop Brian recently conducted in Peru with Yanesha artisans from the Palcázu Valley, he introduced a simple hand tool that produces a much smoother surface than the adze, with a lot less energy and risk.
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"Mantis" on Tour
It's common enough for students to be inspired by their teacher, but Curtis Buchanan was so fired up by the indigenous Peruvian artisans he taught last year, that he went home and redesigned the Windsor chairs he's been building for more than two decades. In February 2008 Curtis and Brian Boggs conducted a GreenWood chairmaking workshop in Oxapampa, Peru, with a group of Yanesha artisans from the Palcázu Valley in the central Amazon. Impressed by their carving ability, Curtis focused his attention on the sculpted seat, greatly increasing its depth and accentuating its dramatic profile, shown in the photo at right. The thicker seat made it possible for him to streamline both the back and the legs, thereby eliminating some of the traditional structural elements that have helped define the Windsor form for nearly 300 years.
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Global is Local
GreenWood is launching a state-of-the-art timber-tracking program in the buffer zone of the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve of Honduras—a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the most pristine forest areas in tropical America. The carefully monitored system of applied bar codes will enable GreenWood and its client, Taylor Guitar Company, to track each of the critical control points in their supply chain of mahogany guitar parts, identifying the origin of the wood and ensuring the integrity of their supply. Owners of a Taylor guitar will be able to identify the actual rainforest location from which the materials in their instrument were derived and confirm that the wood came from a well-managed source.
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