You’ve bought your western dream ranch, or that southeastern quail plantation. It’s time to make the place over to be your own, so what exactly defines the décor of sporting properties? There may not be one definitive answer, but looking at the work of Capers Cauthen, the South Carolina-based master craftsman who repurposes historic lumber into Landrum Tables, a few words come to mind.
Connection
While not every stick of furniture in a hunting lodge needs to serve purpose beyond aesthetic, they often do. Form follows function, and these are not your impractical end tables. Cauthen’s work is rooted in the purposeful. Expansive farmhouse-style tables with plenty of room for your hunting party and bespoke rod-and-gun racks are among his offerings, along with bathroom vanities and lamps.
Conservation
Hides and leather don’t serve just to make us feel like cowboys. The act of repurposing a material from its initial life into a second or even third one is at the heart of Cauthen’s craft. Timber that once served as forest canopy then barn becomes useful again when its first incarnation falls apart. Nature takes notice, too. Cauthen regularly experiences a “buck in his truck” when he goes wood scavenging.
Character
Ambiance often takes the form of the primitive in sporting décor, but that doesn’t mean it has to be rugged. Cauthen contrasts the exposed grain and unfinished curves of his pieces with signature geometry and juxtaposed textures. The result calls you to the wild while allowing a modern surface.
Landrum Tables has seen media attention from Martha Stewart Living, Architectural Digest, Country Living and Garden & Gun magazines. The company’s tables are touted in commercial venues throughout Cauthen’s hometown of Charleston, but the professional success hasn’t changed the man. The son of a preservationist, he hunts deer and duck like any other sportsman, and focuses on his family. It’s his own character the work exposes, not just that of infinite rings of centuries-old harvested timber given new life, and it’s that which looks best in a true sportsman’s lodge—the authenticity of a style that tells a story.
Heather Richie is Wade & Wallow's digital editor and has also written for Oxford American, Fly Fisherman, Sporting Classics, and Garden & Gun. A graduate of College of Charleston and Sewanee: The University of the South, her MFA thesis FULL: A Slim Volume on Southern Foodways was accepted for publication by Louisiana State University Press.
