Clayton Cox has a long and cold Utah winter to thank for helping him get into the rustic
furniture-making business. Some years ago, Cox, of Duck Creek near Panguitch. was running a gas station on U.S. 89. "Business was very slow that winter," be says. So to make extra income, he took in work peeling logs" for a private company, stripping them of their bark until they were long and smooth poles. "I got paid by the foot, and it turned out they gave me more logs to work on then they needed. They paid me anyway, but let me keep the extra logs. So in my spare time, I decided to start building furniture out of them. "So I built a few pieces, just for fun as a hobby, and they sold." So Cox kept on making furniture in his spare time for several years, and four years ago, he decided to make it his fulltime profession. He opened Rustic Mountain Furniture in Duck Creek where he and two fulltime employees now craft a couple of hundred furniture pieces annually, along with manufacturing about 5,000-feet of log railing. Their customers come from as close as Duck Creek to as far away as Alaska, and are a mix of private home owners and retail businesses, such as lodges. "It started with local customers mostly, and then people started hearing about us word-of-mouth." He recently completed a huge project at the new Zion Mountain lodge. "We furnished the entire thing." "We can make anything: beds, a chest, sofas, dining room sets, cabinets, armoires" Cox says. He harvests much of the wood he uses himself - namely aspen from Cedar and Beaver Mountains, adding that they only use "dead logs" and do not remove any live trees. He also gets some wood from Montana. Cox is in the process of moving his shop to the nearby town of Motorville. He will go from a 4,500-square foot workshop to a 17,000-square-foot shop located right on U.S. Highway 89. He is working on developing a web page to showcase his creations along with a catalogue. What are his favorite pieces to make? I would say working with aspen. Every piece is different, every pieces speaks for itself and takes on its own personality. "Plus, we harvest the aspen here, and there is nothing like going out and harvesting a tree yourself and then creating something out of it. There is nothing like that" |
