Books:

Discovered! 505
Odd Enterprises

Hidden Dollars

How to Make
Money at Home

Small Business
of Your Own

You Can Own
a Business

The planters, mobiles and artistic driftwood pieces he sells in his shop are frequently in the form of modern abstract sculpture. Others are like Oriental figurines, and some suggest the faces or heads of animals or human beings.

Many decorators and home owners like the dynamic, dramatic qualities of driftwood, and Cox's imagination and flair for emphasizing the strength, grace and motion incipient in driftwood, plus its texture and color, have brought him customers, and orders from decorators all over California.

Driftwood usually suggests pale, emaciated pieces of grey or white bleached wood lying on a sandy beach. Almost everyone has picked up a piece or two of the wood if he's spent any time at the shore, and wondered as he carts it home from what far-off forest it has journeyed, and how long it has been in the sea.

But Cox's amazing collection is not made up of bleached out pieces. In delicate tans, yellows, mauves, fawns, greens and golds, and the darker shades of red, brown and black, the wood never fails to intrigue the people who stop to view his collection. Almost always they ask him why his driftwood is so vividly colored when the usual pieces are faded and colorless. Smiling, he tells them that these specimens are from the forest, not from the sea; therefore, they are not bleached, but still full of living color.

Redwood, cypress, juniper, ponderosa and sugar pine are the principal sources of Cox's constantly growing collection. When he first came to Ben Lomond, his hobby of collecting driftwood had led him to amass between 200 and 300 assorted pieces. But now the demand of his customers for the planters, ferneries, lamp bases and other items he shaped from the driftwood has fast depleted his supply. Trips through the mountain and lake country of California, and even into the deserts of southern California and Nevada are often necessary to augment his stockpile.

COX'S INTEREST in driftwood began back during the thirties when the depression caused everyone to cut corners. An uncle showed him how to find the cone-shaped, hard wedge-ends of the branches from fallen sugar pine trees. These pine knots made wonderful firewood and were easy to dig out, once you knew where to look for them. Cox sold loads of these pine knots to friends and neighbors who would pay more for them than for regular cord wood.

While searching for the pine knots, Cox often found unusual pieces of wood, some shaped in animals' heads, some like art forms he had seen. These he began collecting and his wife often used them for flower arrangements, and mantel and wall decorations.

His interest in pine knots and driftwood had to take a back seat, however, to his growing citrus business, and soon it was only during vacation trips that he was able to browse through the woods looking for additional pieces for his collection as well as his fireplace. Still, the assortment of beautiful and amusing shapes was growing. Cox began toying with the idea of opening a driftwood shop when he retired from his citrus business.

Upon his retirement he purchased the house in Ben Lomond, California. He built his shop, about nine by twelve feet in size, onto the front of the house and lined the walls of the room with display shelves for his choicest pieces. At one end of the room a large table shows off the special pieces.

In the spacious side yard which is entered by a wide, graveled driveway, he does his work on a long table covered with driftwood. Planters and large driftwood pieces line the fence, and unusual pieces cling to the dark-red painted, outside walls of the house.

During the summer months, the highway is constantly traveled by visitors to the near-by state park. Seeing Cox at work in his yard, they stop to browse around and "see what is going on" at their leisure. Usually they find a driftwood planter with ivy growing in it, or they pick up a larger patio piece or a birdhouse. If they don't seem to find anything in the yard display, Cox or his wife invites them inside the shop where his most artistic pieces may be viewed.

One of his selling points inside the shop is a large scrapbook which he shows the customer. Compiled by Mrs. Cox, the book is a collection of articles and pictures about driftwood and its many varied uses which Mrs. Cox has found in magazines and newspapers. The scrapbook often suggests to the prospective buyer uses to which he may put Cox's driftwood in his own home.

WHEN HE first opened his shop, Cox communicated with decorator's shops in several California cities, offering to look for special pieces for them and listing his prices along with descriptions of planters and unusual driftwood pieces he had in his shop. Florists also, liked the idea of having a few artistic pieces for their flower arrangements and window displays.

When on his forest hunts for driftwood, Cox keeps particularly on the lookout for pine knots, bowl-shaped pieces to be used for planters, and pieces that are unusual in shape. For instance, pieces resembling animal heads, such as bears' heads, deer or ox heads and like shapes are good sellers, he finds.

The pine knots sell best at Christmas time, and these Cox decorates with fancy rope handles and pine cones, tying a little folder to them which describes them as being seasoned Yule logs. Department stores, patio and gift shops in the area are glad to handle them during the holiday season on a percentage basis, and Cox prices them at $1.95 for small logs up to $15 for the large ones.

The natural bowl shapes for planters and ferneries are best, but unfortunately quite rare. Driftwood pieces that may be hollowed out in the center and sawed flat for the base are more abundant. Mrs. Cox usually handles the planting of these, using such greenery as five-finger ferns, baby Woodwardia, creeping violets, several types of ivy, and even marsh grasses and succulents. Plants do well in these natural containers, the wood helps them and they help the wood. Demand for the planters is heavy, and Cox charges for them according to the value of the plants in them and size of the piece. Small ones bring from $1.50 up to $8. The very large patio ferneries which are almost a complete garden in a driftwood base can go up to $250.

TO PREPARE the driftwood for selling, Cox cleans the, piece, washing it in warm water and brushing it lightly with a wire brush. Once in awhile he helps shape a more graceful line with a dull knife and fine sandpaper, but never does he cut or otherwise model the piece, except sometimes to give it a flat base or hollow it out for planting.

"That would give it an artificial look," he says. "Driftwood should be just as nature modeled it—suggesting a shape, not too clearly defining one."

Using imagination, one can often see many different shapes and designs in the same piece of driftwood. Often no two people can agree on the faces and figures he sees.

Many customers wish to purchase driftwood lamps or lamp bases, but these Cox does not make, although they are a most profitable item for those who wish to make them. However, he does cut the piece a customer selects into the proper size for a base, if the buyer wishes to make the lamp himself.

Cox uses the very large burls or root pieces for patio ferneries or for table bases. With the hollows and swirls of the burl left intact and planted with ferns and other plants, a miniature wonderland suggesting forests, lakes, and rivers can be fashioned. Sawed off smoothly, waxed and fitted with a plate-glass top, the burl will make an unusual coffee table base, selling from $150 and up.

Some customers look for driftwood bases on which to plant miniature or dwarfed trees. Driftwood mobiles are something new, also. Cox delights in wiring the small, dainty and unusual pieces together. Hanging from a patio shelter, turning in the summer breeze, a driftwood mobile is strangely soothing and relaxing to watch.

COX DOES not use redwood stain or varnish on any of his pieces. Once in a great while he will lightly sand and wax a smooth piece that suggests modern sculpture and whose texture calls for a smooth, shiny surface, such as the one he has named "Speed," and a black one he calls "Ebony." The coal-black driftwood which looks like ebony is really redwood which has been through fire. He carefully scrapes and sands the charred layer off, and waxes it very lightly.

The "modern" or "abstract sculpture" pieces of driftwood bring the highest prices, ranging from $10 up to $150. Sought after by decorators because of their rarity and artistic value, they are used exactly as would be an actual sculptured or ceramic figure.

Since redwood articles are much in demand by residents in the resort area for use in their summer cottages, Cox handles redwood tubs, flowerpots, birdhouses and shrines, which however, he does not make himself. He does make a clever little bird snack bar. Forming it from a six-inch hollow log about four inches in diameter, Cox fits one end with a circular plug and bores a hole in it for the door. Another plug in the opposite end, pushed in to leave an inch of space for the birdseed-and-suet filling, furnishes the "snack bar."

A tiny driftwood twig is used as a perch under the feed mixture which is coated with melted paraffin wax. A roof is then fitted over the hollow log. These sell for $3.50 to $4.25, depending on size.

Cox has also originated the highly decorative "Sierra pine rose," fashioned from cones of the giant sugar pine trees. The cones are gathered at 8,000 foot altitudes in the High Sierras during the season when they are just dropping, for the lovely shadings and colors are lost by exposure to sun and moisture if left long on the ground.

Cox separates the huge cones into round slices containing a single layer of seed scales. These form the petals of the rose and are delicately shaded. Bits of chartreuse mountain moss which he finds dried on dead branches of mountain pines are glued to the center of the flower. A tiny pine cone completes the pistil and stamen. Fitted with tall stems of California sage, the roses are used to make year-long decorative centerpieces. A gentle sprinkling with water twice yearly keeps the colors vivid and the Sierra roses fresh the year 'round.