Wendy Silverstein
Wendy Silverstein is a former editor at Architectural Digest, Home, Kitchen & Bath Customer Planner, and Home/Style magazines. A consultant to the design industry, she works closely with interior designers, architects and other professionals in the field.
American Oak, Texas Style
There are 90 species of oak native to the United States. Ever since the colonial era, we’ve been using the hardy, attractive, and plentiful hardwood for furniture, flooring, paneling, and building, making it familiar to every American; it’s even the country’s National...
Hardwood Gifts for the Holiday Season
From safe and sturdy playthings for the nursery to sleek and stylish furniture for the living room, there’s a whole world of beautiful American hardwood products—made right here in the United States—that will check all the boxes on your holiday gift list. Here are six...
Tree Talk: A Visit to Chesterwood
Most summers I try to visit Chesterwood, the former country home and studio of the sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), most famous for his monumental statue of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, DC’s Lincoln Memorial. The National Trust for Historic Preservation...
Mixed Messages: Using Hardwood with Other Materials
I’m constantly delighted by the imaginative ways in which designers, architects, and style-savvy homeowners combine hardwood with other materials and surfaces. Depending on the species, stain, and finish, wood can be made to blend in unobtrusively with, or stand out...
Hardwood at KBIS 2020
The annual Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (KBIS), is always a source of interesting new hardwood products for the home. This year’s exposition, held in January in Las Vegas, was no exception. There was a spectacular range of wood cabinetry, furniture, accessories, and...
The Legacy of American Red Oak
Last summer, our sister organization, the American Hardwood Export Council, collaborated with the London Design Festival on the Legacy Project in which ten leaders of British cultural institutions each commissioned a prominent designer to create an heirloom piece—a...
The Beauty of Sustainable Hardwood
When artist Hadley Williams renovated her family home in California’s Bay Area, she asked the makeover team—designer Sherry Williamson, architect Andrew Mann, and builder Michael McCutcheon—for a clean-lined, elegantly simple, and ultra-eco-friendly residence....
Hardwood Paneling Goes Dark
Although dark wood paneling is traditionally associated with the haunts of wealth and power—corporate board rooms, gentlemen’s clubs, grand public chambers—it’s appearing more and more in 21st-century residential settings. And while richly hued hardwood on walls can...
Hardwood Gifts for the Holidays
Each season I simplify my holiday giving by focusing on gifts made of American hardwood. There’s an enormous selection out there, ranging from the sleekly sophisticated to the charmingly rustic—and everything in between. Here are six items I’ve already got my eye on....
Hardwood Media Centers
I love TV as much as the next red-blooded American. What I don’t like is how a TV looks—particularly the enormous flat-screen variety that, switched on, offers a stunning high-definition image as good as any movie theater’s but, switched off, becomes a black hole on...