Old-Growth Finds the New World

Continued...

The perceived ecological advantages of building with vintage teak appealed to Dr. Richard Ostreicher, a California-based dermatologist who drives a hybrid car and owns a vacation house in Hawaii that uses solar power. When he wanted to put a gazebo in his Oakland backyard two years ago, he bypassed the big-box home stores and found a structure made of teak from an old joglo, an ornate style of Indonesian house. "It's original, it's gorgeous and you're not taking down any new trees," said Dr. Ostreicher, who bought the gazebo from Gado Gado International, a furniture and crafts importer in Santa Rosa, Calif., paying about $11,000. "This is a beautiful work of art, and if it were just left on the road somewhere it might be lost."

After years of these supplies being depleted, many countries in the region have strict laws limiting over-harvesting, and oldgrowth teak has become a rare commodity, according to Mr. Hayward.

Finding and exporting this sought-after old-growth teak is the job of hunters like Ms. Carpenter, who has gone on buying trips to Southeast Asia every one to three months since TerraMai began selling teak in 2000. On one such trip last July, she visited a village outside Chiang Mai, on a tip from one of TerraMai's local agents that a woman there was interested in selling her house. Approaching the home in question, one of a row of simple but sturdy wooden structures raised on stilts, she scratched a support beam, sniffing for the sharp, leathery smell of teak. A white-haired woman sitting at a table nearby pointed to garlic drying beneath the raised floor and asked Ms. Carpenter if she had come to buy some. "No," Ms. Carpenter told the old woman in Thai, "I came to buy the house."

After locating the property owner, a middle- aged woman, Ms. Carpenter spoke to her through an interpreter. The owner exexplained that she had inherited the house from a relative, but did not need it. Her reason for selling to Ms. Carpenter was simple: If the home were put on the local market, the lot would bring a modest sum, but traders in salvaged teak — both local buyers and foreigners like Ms. Carpenter — are willing to pay hundreds of dollars per cubic meter, or more than $50,000 for an entire house.

Many homeowners in Southeast Asia use teak "like a bank," said Philippe Guizol, a researcher who frequently works with the Center for International Forestry Research, a conservation organization based in Indonesia. "If you need cash and you have teak in your floor, you just sell it," Mr. Guizol said.

But Ms. Carpenter says she avoids buying houses that people would otherwise continue living in, as well as historic landmarks like temples. She noted that she is required by the Thai government to process the wood — re-mill or dry it — before shipping it to the United States, so the country's resources are not being removed without an investment in local labor.

Importers point out that the wood can last another century or more, even if the shift in context is stark, said Mark Suess, a designer for Global Surroundings. In his home in St. Cloud, Minn., the pocked floorboards running from the front door to the dining room were planed smooth years earlier for use in Indonesian homes. The cabinet where his family stores cookbooks was for decades an altar and reliquary where people prayed. The result is an exchange of cultural styles, as Americans like Mr. Suess embrace an old-fashioned Asian aesthetic, while many Southeast Asians look to contemporary Western design.

Ms. Howe of Bridgehampton, who frequently travels to Southeast Asia for business, said that in the last decade the replacement of wooden structures with Western- style buildings has been obvious.

"It seems almost natural that they would be changing and updating," she said. "And then one day they'll probably want their old teak back again."