for very rustic looking furniture--or building. Juniper.
http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/ezine/todaysww.cfm
(http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/ezine/images/supportcolumns.jpg)
Twisted with dramatic dark and light bands coiling around each other, the wood he (Bruce McAllister in Mitchell, Oregon) chooses shows up in only about one percent of the Western juniper from which he makes furniture. Rather than lose this remarkable natural display, he crafts his pieces not from milled lumber, but from cleaned, debarked natural forms, cleverly assembled to look as if they had conveniently grown into handy furniture shapes. Like so many things in life, serendipity helped lure him into this work.