Raven Toney is an artist who sees the possibilities in items that are overlooked or dismissed by others. His furniture is made entirely from salvaged wood: discarded planks, flooring, stumps, limbs. Toney takes what others throw away, literally, and crafts gorgeous, functional art.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, who grew up in Big Ugly, West Virginia, Toney has called many places home, including New York, Los Angeles, Charleston and Knoxville. He has spent time in London, Paris, Rome and several other cities in the U.S. Toney has exhibited his work from Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee, to Charleston to Madison Avenue in New York City. It is Cleveland, however, that he has always considered his true home.

With styles ranging from rustic to mid-century modern, Toney allows each piece to take form on its own. “A tree trunk may sit in my studio for months with me walking by it every day,” Toney says. “Then one day, I realize what I want to do with it, what it ‘needs’ to be. Salvaging wood is my passion….each piece comes with the designs already embedded in the grain. I just have to coax them out.”