PHILADELPHIA - Adam Rung's life to date, all 30 years of it, is so closely connected to wood, you might think it's in his DNA.

It's always been about the wood for Rung, a third-generation maker of custom furniture in the Port Richmond area of Philadelphia. Starting at age 4, he learned about hand tools and machinery, sanding and milling, from his father, Paul, an erstwhile forestry professor who learned the craft from his father.

And Adam learned fine finishing from his mother, Bonnie, whose grandfather was a shipwright in New England.

"Woodworking has been in my life on a daily basis my whole life," Rung says. "I grew to love it."

The fruits of this unbroken line of artisanship can be found at Adam Rung Woodworks, on the dusty third floor of the refurbished Atlas Casket Co. building in the 3200 block of Cedar Street. He shares space with three other woodworkers and an artist, in what's still considered the heart of Philadelphia's Polish community.

"There's a school down the street where they still talk in Polish," says Rung, whose own heritage is German and Welsh.

He seems to delight in this melding of the historic and modern, and his woodworking style reflects it. Traditional 18th-century and Shaker designs, honed during years of apprenticeship with his furniture-making family, are updated with contemporary touches - clean lines, utility, and what Rung first describes as "simplicity," only to correct himself.

"I mean 'unpretentiousness,'" he says. "It's not simple.

"I'm not trying to create 'art furniture,'" Rung explains. "I'm trying to create functional, utilitarian furniture that's beautiful."

He favors domestic hardwoods such as cherry, maple, oak and walnut, and is increasingly moving toward the more ecologically friendly use of reclaimed salvage lumber, water- or citrus-based finishes and solvents.

Rung finds salvage wood in trash bins, or gets it from contractors demolishing houses in the city - which is how he found some thick floor and ceiling joists made of old red-heart and yellow pine.

It's a lot of work to pull the nails out and clean it up. Ends up costing as much as new wood. But, Rung says, "you're saving something, and that's important."

In its day, red-heart pine wasn't favored by the wealthy, who could afford mahogany, walnut, oak or chestnut. But it has much tighter grain patterns than today's wood, which is grown and harvested relatively quickly, and it is, Rung says respectfully, "very beautiful."

One way he modernizes traditional bookcases, tables, chairs and cabinets is to mix woods of different colors, like a golden-hued curly maple and a chocolate-colored walnut. He also adds inlay work or metals, and attaches quirky hardware.

He's crafted a coffee table from four pieces of redwood flooring salvaged from the old Schmidt's brewery, where it was in storage for 60 years. The wood was free of knots, blemishes and cracks. A treasure, for sure.

The table is now a deep, creamy red burnished with more than five coats of polyurethane and linseed oil, which Rung rubbed in by hand. Affixed to the top are four small gears a friend gave him from an old spaghetti machine from South Philly. They look like metal blossoms.

And instead of wooden table legs, Rung has attached chunky "knock wrenches" at least a half-century old, found at an industrial-supply place in Glassboro, N.J.

Table price: $1,650. Not cheap, but not stratospheric either.

"A lot of people don't understand about good furniture," Rung says. "They want it now. They want it fast. They want it cheap. But that translates into falling apart in five years."

Recycling fits into this belief system, which Rung shares with his wife, Misty Kauffman. She has a thing about wood, too: She's a full-time forest ecologist who also works with her husband applying finish to his furniture (a skill she learned from her mother-in-law).

So, clean sawdust goes to a horse farm for bedding, and leftover wood makes cutting boards, mirrors and boxes. Displaying these and smaller pieces of furniture at repeated appearances at craft shows, Rung builds relationships with clients over time.

"People don't go to a craft show to buy furniture," he says, "but they will remember you two or three years later, when they're doing a house or an addition or a new kitchen."

His parents have happily watched his woodworking style evolve from the traditional to the more modern and artistic.

"I think he's much more into design and coming up with new concepts than we were," says his mother, Bonnie. "His imagination really surprised us."

For all the talk of design and imagination, there's no mistaking Rung's business for a hobby. But he hopes to have it both ways, making a living and enjoying the journey.

He has a life, in other words. He doesn't pull all-nighters in the shop. He and his wife take time to run and garden together, occasionally escaping to Puerto Rico or Key West.

Such equanimity may make him an unusual artist. So does one other thing, at least among furniture-makers: He has every one of his fingers.