The Iconic Hammerton Pine Cone

Some stories can be reduced to a brief summary with the popular phrase, “In a nutshell.” The Hammerton story is better abbreviated with, “From a pinecone.” Indeed, this unassuming little collection of seedpods is a mighty symbol of both our organic heritage and the extraordinary artisan metalwork that still distinguishes our work today.

Back in the 1990s, when Hammerton was busy crafting light fixtures for booming ski resort markets throughout the intermountain West, our most popular look of the time was a rustic mountain organic style featuring life-like textured evergreen boughs laden with needles and pine cones — all meticulously handcrafted from steel.  We created thousands of pinecones, ultimately patenting the process that enabled one artisan to handcraft 3-4 of them per hour. A time-consuming process, but one that the market clearly desired.

Today, the pinecone is not only a symbol of our organic roots and our USA artisan-made craftsmanship. Remarkably, it’s still the most popular organic motif from our Log & Timber collection. Indeed, great design never goes out of style!

Above we’ve featured a few of our favorite Log & Timber designs featuring the iconic Hammerton pinecone, along with an inside look at their fabrication. Let us know what you think!

If you’d like to see more point-cone laden fixtures from the Hammerton Log & Timber collection, please click here.