4 minute read
TURQUOISE HOME DECOR
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Custom Designed Home Decor with a Turquoise Technique
Story by Dalondo Moultrie
Photos by Felicia Frazar & courtesy of Benito Loera
Following decades of working for himself in architecture and construction, a Guadalupe County resident wanted something more.
After noticing his children aging and growing while he spent more and more time working, Benito M. “Benno” Loera made a decision that changed the course of his life and led to a lucrative new business he could mostly do at home.
“We were on call 24/7 because it was a big commercial job. Our kids were getting ready to go into high school and some getting ready for college,” Loera said. “I was tired of being on 24-hour call. We decided to sell all our tools and equipment and get out of the building business.”
The next move came to Loera by happenstance and led to his current venture creating high-end custom furniture operating as South Texas Mesquite and Cedar Treasures. Much of the company’s in-demand furniture is inlaid with turquoise and other gemstones for a signature look that further highlights the custom carvings.
“I always loved woodworking so I decided ‘hey, why don’t we start this business?’ We built a shop, a small one, and started doing it here,” Loera said of his home woodworking studio. “I started going to these little art fairs. As we became more popular with people, I said maybe this could work.”
Loera mills and dries the wood himself. Creating the pieces includes a long, detailed process from the ground up. He uses about 26 semiprecious stones inlaid into a wide variety of woods.
Shortly after starting his new venture, Loera began carving things like boxes and chests with turquoise inlays. He eventually sold a wooden box at a craft fair. The woman who bought it told her friends and the next day his booth at the event was packed with folks looking for wood creations with inlays.
“That started what we were doing, our own little trademark,” Loera said. “To this day, we still use about 26 semiprecious stones. … Turquoise became our trademark. We started that in 1997.”
All of the techniques he uses to craft items like tables, chairs, pool tables, bars, barstools and more he learned on his own. He would pick up magazines and books to look at some techniques but fine tuned his style by trial and error, Loera said.
“Everything we did was self taught, self developed,” he said. “We didn’t go and copy anybody else. We didn’t copy anything. We just did what we felt.”
Over the decades, doing what he felt turned into what many people adore and some cherish.
He began building larger pieces, furniture and more functional items, Loera said. From there, things really started to take off.
He began showing pieces at stock shows and rodeos and gained more notice. Demand increased for even larger pieces.
“One year, somebody said, ‘Hey, can you build me a pool table,’” Loera said. “This was 2004. I said yeah and I built a pool table. It was a mesquite, single-pedestal pool table.”
Due to the intricacy and amount of work involved in crafting the table, he priced it at a pretty penny, Loera said. He thought the big sticker price would discourage other buyers from requesting such a large, ornate piece, but boy was he wrong.
“I didn’t want to pursue building pool tables,” Loera said. “It was just too expensive for the normal guy, $26,500 for a pool table.”
He attended a festival that same year in Fredericksburg and had a photo of the mesquite pool table on display. The photo alone drew raves and he received requests for similar billiards tables along with wooden bars, chairs, regular tables and much more, Loera said.
He’s built pool tables with the Texas Longhorns insignia and other eye-catching designs to the delight of clients from many different walks of life. Inspiration sometimes just comes to him, Loera said.
“In my designing of things, I’ve always had this kick of trying to find something different,” he said. “Basically, you let the wood tell you what it is. Both my sons have the same knack.
They look at a piece of wood and say that’s a table, that’s a pool table, that’s a chair or whatever it is.”
Loera said he mills and dries the wood himself. Creating the pieces includes a long, detailed process from the ground up, he said.
While it’s a lot of work, he gets to do it from home, be his own boss, hire young people in need and willing to learn, and make customers happy with his artistry, Loera said.
The response he gets from some of his clients is rewarding, he said.
“I think I still like to do the single pedestal pool tables,” Loera said. “Those are the most striking pieces and the pieces that when people look at them in pictures and then you take them their pool tables, they’re, like, ‘Oh my God, it’s better than what you showed me in the picture.’ They go on and on.
“That’s for me the best compliment.”
