“Every tree has a story. It doesn’t have to end at the landfill.”
That’s the heartfelt mantra of Superior Artisan Wood and its owners, Chad Fletcher and Allen Murphree.
Superior Artisan Wood takes pride in rebirthing timber into beautiful slabs of wood to use in various ways.
Their Mississippi-made business began with an idea and has turned into an art form full of craftsmanship and preservation.
Fletcher’s side business began to grow partially by accident and partially out of necessity. He and his family were getting ready to build a home. He had always been interested in sawmilling, so he purchased a small sawmill to do some custom work in his own home. Having always enjoyed sawmilling, he sold his small sawmill and bought a larger one that gave him more significant production and mobile sawing capabilities. Fletcher soon began to do some side-work; right around this time, his 20-year career in a different industry began to wane.
This was the birth of Superior Artisan Wood.
The business began to pick up quickly, and Fletcher’s longtime friend Allen Murphree was interested in some side work at the time and just recently had some timber fall on his property.
“We were noticing a demand for processing huge timber in the area, which led us to our current sawmill, the Lucas Model 830,” Fletcher said.
This particular sawmill model enables the two to process massive logs into everything from a countertop for a kitchen island to a charcuterie board.
They recently processed a log from Tammy Wynette’s home place in Itawamba County that was so large, it had to be placed on several cinder blocks even to make the initial cut!
Superior Artisan Wood preserves history by salvaging wood found in declining health and restoring its natural beauty.
“This was a log that was in a ditch for seven years and took about 60 days for us to dry it out and process it,” Fletcher said as he pointed to a beautiful slab of wood.
There is a part of history in every piece of wood that comes through their shop.
Superior Artisan Wood is geared for specialty and quality stock items. People come to their shop in Tupelo from all over to salvage a tree from their front yard that might have fallen in a storm, or maybe it simply had to come down off their property. Fletcher and Murphree listen to their customers and create something beautiful and unique from their timber for them to keep for generations to come.
“Please don’t send your trees to a landfill. There’s another way. The trees have to be picked up and placed somewhere anyway; bring them here instead,” Murphree explained.
There is a diverse amount of inventory at any given time for any DIY-er to come and pick a slab of wood that’s already in stock and create what they’d like. That’s why Fletcher offers a Google Doc with step-by-step directions for each customer, so if they want to try this themself one day, they can!
“We are self-taught and are happy to help any DIY-er learn this process,” he said.
Being the only certified urban wood supplier in the state also allows Superior Artisan Wood to collaborate on various projects with people who want to preserve historical timber, allowing it to “share its story for generations to come.”
Having been involved with several personal and historic projects throughout Mississippi, it comes as no surprise that Superior Artisan Wood has been featured several times on HGTV’s Hometown.
Superior Artisan Wood is changing the way people look at urban wood. They provide their customers with property preservation with personal meaning while giving new life to timber that might have otherwise been tossed aside.
Every tree does indeed have a story to tell. Superior Artisan Wood continually provides a way for new chapters to be written.
Are you interested in a project? Visit superiorartisanwood.com to learn more!
