Lloyd Alter out of Toronto posts an article in the Design and Architecture section of Treehugger.com titled “Bark Shingles: If it Works For Trees, Why Not Houses.”

Alter writes:
“Humans only invented vinyl siding a few decades ago, but tree bark has been protecting trees for quite a while longer. Bark shingles were often used on Craftsman style houses in the early 1900s, but they were made from chestnut, which was almost wiped out in a blight. A century later, they still look good. Chris and Marty McCurry started looking at bark shingles in the early nineties and reinvented them, reintroducing them as a product in 1996.”

Click here to read the full TreeHugger post

Alex Wilson of BuildGreen.com had this to say about HC’s Bark House Poplar Siding:

“MBDC had a booth focused on its Cradle to Cradle product certification, where it displayed Bark House, a residential siding made by Highland Craftsmen from the bark of the tulip tree (Leriodendron tulipifera), which is sometimes—incorrectly—referred to as a poplar. The bark, a byproduct, is peeled from recently felled trees, cut to size, flattened, fully kiln-dried, and heat-sterilized. The bark itself provides its own “backing” and weatherproof layer. And it looks really cool—rather like, well, bark. The cost is fairly reasonable, too: about $6–$9 per square foot ($70–$100/m2) for the material or $12–$14 per square foot ($130–$150/m2) installed. BuildingGreen reviewed Bark House for our GreenSpec directory, but I had never really grasped one of the real beauties of this product: when you want to replace it, you just pull it off and throw it into the woods to decompose. The product has become one of the few building products to earn a Cradle to Cradle Gold rating from MBDC.”

Click here to read his full review.

Read about author/writer Nan Chase’s choice to build with Highland Craftsmen’s Poplar Bark Shingles: ” My own interest in building a bark house came while I was helping to write a book on the subject (“Bark House Style: Sustainable Designs From Nature,” with Chris McCurry).”  read the full article at csmonitor.com

RALEIGH, NC – Eighteen North Carolina companies will receive federal stimulus grants to spur development in green technology, Gov. Bev Perdue said Wednesday.  Each company plans to develop and market green and alternative energy technologies. According to the Office of the Governor the grants will create more than 200 jobs.

Read More at TechJournal

From GoBlueRidge.net
Written by Adam Hicks Thursday, November 19 2009

Small businesses in Watauga, Mitchell, and Catawba County were three of 18 that received grant money from the state to continue their work in green initiatives.

According to Governor Bev Perdue’s office, High Country Green Box LLC in Boone was awarded a $97,989 grant.  High Country Green Box is working on a green solution for the affordable housing crisis in North Carolina Repurposing “Standard International Shipping Units” that are currently being discarded, into energy-efficient modular housing units.

Highland Craftsmen Inc. in Spruce Pine was given a $31,985 grant to create a job training course that creates environmentally preferable building product supply chain encouraging the use of bark shingles from local, sustainably managed forests to be used as green building material.

SunQest, Inc. in Newton was awarded $50,718 in grant money to create a solar thermal enhancement and in state manufacturing commercializing a solar thermal system to heat residential, building, pool and other medium-temperature applications.

The Governor’s office said the grant money was made available through the federal recovery and reinvestment act and came through the N.C. Energy Office’s State Energy Program.

Source: GoBlueRidge.net

Mayland Court furniture incorporating Bark House laminates is featured in Best of the Market section of Furniture Today.

Meridian tables featuring Bark House Massive Wooden Slabs gets great write up in Furniture Today

July 01, 2009

“A number of the old bark siding structures are still standing today, but the same can’t be said for the source of the bark. Due to it’s resistance to rot, the bark of the American chestnut was the choice for making shingles. But a blight that was accidentally introduced from Asia in the early 1900s eradicated these great trees of the Eastern forest.

This book, however, is not a lament over what was but rather a positive view of what is again. The bark of yellow poplar, an abundant species in North Carolina, has been found to have the same resilient qualities as chestnut. With this information, Chris McCurry and her husband, Marty, founded Highland Craftsmen, which manufactures and installs poplar bark shingles to build on the tradition started by Henry Bacon more than 100 years ago.”

Reno Gazette-Journal

April 28, 2009

“…According to the magazine, the kitchen cabinets were handcrafted from pine finished at a sixth-generation California steam mill, while the square nails came from Tremont Nail, the country’s oldest nail manufacturers. Poplar bark shingles panel the walls of the first floor powder room…”

Toledo Free Press

“Be it door hardware, siding or the store’s two glass-paneled elevators, many of the buildings elements are trimmed with reclaimed barn wood, fiberglass logs, stamped tin, bark shingles or cedar-based siding…”