Craftsman Gerald Judice talks about how he acquired the large old cypress ‘sinker’ from the Atchafalaya Basin. He regularly harvests old cypress driftwood.
Craftsman Gerald Judice talks about how he acquired the large old cypress ‘sinker’ from the Atchafalaya Basin. He regularly harvests old cypress driftwood.
Lee Ball / The Daily Iberian
Emily Broussard, daughter of craftsman Gerald Judice, puts the finishing touches on a bowl she carved out of a block reclaimed driftwood.
LOREAUVILLE — To say Gerald Judice collects wood wouldn’t come within a mile of accurate description.
Thousands of pieces of reclaimed lumber and driftwood dot the yard of the home he built 32 years ago in strategic piles, almost like large-scale crawfish mounds. Some piles are in the lengthy drying-out process underneath awnings, inside a shed or even in the home’s attic. One piece of old cypress driftwood the size of a rowboat hangs chained to a tree branch as one of the 61-year-old Judice’s prizes.
“This is pretty large scale, as far as hobbies go,” Judice said, surrendering a chuckle. “It represents what we do. This is a lifetime inventory of wood.”
The Sugar Oaks Road property, which currently houses Judice’s daughter, 25-year-old Emily Broussard, and her family, began its transformation 32 years ago when Judice, who grew up directly across the street, designed and built the home for his late first wife out of old cypress reclaimed from demolished houses and barns.
The slow-growing old cypress has a tighter wood grain, Judice said, giving it superior wood-working properties.
It is for that reason he is thrilled to make annual trips to the Atchafalaya Basin to harvest old cypress driftwood from the swamp. Most of those pieces were leftover from logging that began in 1800 and some of those trees were more than 1,000 years old.
The first of those trips happened as Judice was getting ready to build his home. His wife, a teacher, had introduced some colleagues who were woodworkers and they brought Judice on a trip to the basin. Judice recovered his first-ever piece of driftwood on that trip.
That wood is now the kitchen cabinets in that home.
All of the wood he recovers is destined to become something, be it bowls, cooking spoons, furniture, boxes, porch swings, benches or artwork. His material also includes cedar, cherry, mahogany, magnolia and walnut. Those items Judice doesn’t make for himself or family sell for hundreds of dollars sometimes. With them comes the memory of how he acquired each piece.
“When you throw the story behind it, that’s what people want,” he said, “and I love to tell it.”
Judice did not always wake up daily weighing whether he wanted to tool around in his shed or go fishing.
To tell his abridged story, Judice continued his farming career after he built the home. Five years after its construction, Judice’s wife died.
He eventually remarried and 16 years ago, his second wife invited him to leave farming as a career to pursue his interest in woodworking.
That interest was born first when he learned how to make simple repairs to a home and later how to built the massive house that stands in tip-top shape to this day. The knowledge early on made him hungry for more, he said.
“The thing about it is, it’s fun,” Judice added. “Basically, we’ve been playing around with this my whole adult life.”
