By Rustic furniture became popular during the back-to-nature movement that captivated affluent city folks in the mid-1800s. They bought land out in the country and built camps, cottages, retreats and lodges—sometimes grand, sometimes primitive. “Rusticating” (going to the country home for a few months during the sticky heat of summer) became a new word in everyone’s vocabulary.

Made with natural materials like roots, logs, twigs, branches and, occasionally, animal horns and antlers, rustic furniture is both charming and unassuming. The first serious North American rustic furniture was made in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. From the mid-19th century until the 1930s, caretakers of the “great camps” created furniture during the winter months when the property owners were not in residence. In time, nearly all other regions of North America also saw the emergence of rustic furniture as a cottage industry.

Working within this tradition, today’s rustic furniture makers transform natural materials into simple yet beautiful pieces. Art-furniture collectors or homeowners looking for that perfect, made-by-hand accent piece, snap up these neo-rustic pieces. Montana artist Diane Ross made her first bentwood willow chair in the 1970s and sold it right out of her truck in Bozeman.

“My kids helped me gather the wood,” she says. She still goes out—on foot or horseback—to gather willow in the river bottoms and, after a windstorm, to check for fallen trees. She is especially enchanted by the texture of bark and uses it often. “The bark of a tree is like a woman of a certain age: It can tell you an interesting story,” she says. In addition, she uses reclaimed wood from barns, snow fences and other rural structures that have collapsed or are being razed. Ross handcrafts her signature pieces in a style reminiscent of the hickory chairs and tables made popular by the Old Hickory Furniture Company in Indiana—except that she uses cherry and chokecherry wood—sanding, oiling and rubbing the finish until it is as smooth as silk. “I work it until it looks good to me, then I stop.” Drew Hubatsek, also from Montana, calls himself a born-again Luddite who loves working with hand tools. His furniture is informed by childhood memories of his family’s summer home in the Adirondacks. “When we visited some of the other great camps open to the public—Camp Sagamore, which at the time was owned by the Vanderbilts, and J.P. Morgan’s Camp Uncas—I was struck by the beauty of the rustic furniture,” he says. “It just seemed so right.” He works in oak, maple, Douglas fir, alder, cherry and apple, and he particularly enjoys picking up limbs after a storm. “I prop them up in my shop and rearrange them until something looks right,” he says. This process can take a year or more. The result: brushy, twiggy, one-of-a-kind chairs that look as if they were still alive and growing.

“Wood is an amazing substance,” says Baltimore artist Rick Laufer, who started making functional pieces to furnish his own home. “It is hard, yet so easily shaped.” His sculptural furniture is inspired by the organic forms favored by the legendary George Nakashima and Sam Maloof. Interested in working primarily with sustainable wood, Laufer visits an Amish sawmill in southern Pennsylvania to obtain logs from farmers and trees that were damaged in storms or blown down. From these he matches the grain (making sure it flows in a single direction) and shapes each piece using hand tools. To finish, he rubs on six or seven coats of natural oils, sanding between each coat.