By JEFF BARNARD
Associated Press
GRANTS PASS, Ore. – Chris Hart’s studio is stacked floor to ceiling with not-quite antiques, old doors and windows, cast-off bird cages and pieces of old houses that she saved from the landfill.
She cuts them up, mixes them together and creates furniture that is also art – works she hopes will someday become heirlooms that the not-quite antiques could never be.
“People ask what I do for a living,” said Hart, dressed in jeans and an artisan’s long apron, leaning against her workbench, beneath which her Doberman, Rita, chewed on a toy tiger.
“I really don’t know. I like to say I’m a furniture designer and my pieces are new construction made from components I’ve taken from other pieces – molding from a house in Jacksonville, the legs off an old bed, that kind of thing.”
The most interesting pieces she found were invariably the antiques. “But they were being thrown away because they couldn’t be made good enough to be sold as an antique. So I started cannibalizing those pieces in my new construction. I found the final product was much more interesting than if I built a new piece of furniture from scratch.
“Plus, it’s harder to find solid wood any more. You don’t find that kind of molding, those kinds of legs, those kinds of carved pieces.”
Hart makes Trumeau mirrors, kitchen islands, cupboards, hallway benches, picture frames, decorative panels, plaster saints and chandeliers. They all carry the glow of age and use, a sense of country living and an originality born of mixed origins. They’re sold in a few shops in the Pacific Northwest and through her Web site, www.chrishartstudio.com.
Katrina McDermott spotted Hart’s work about nine years ago while visiting her grandparents in Grants Pass and now sells it at her store, Embellish, on Bainbridge Island outside Seattle.
“I think it’s appealing to people who want that imperfect, charming piece of furniture that you can’t go to Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel and find,” said McDermott.
She has seen others try to do what Hart does, without her results. “Because she’s an artist, she can make it look like it’s intentional instead of just a bunch of disparate items or things put together,” McDermott said.
McDermott loves to look through the “before” pieces stacked in Hart’s studio and develop ideas for custom pieces. “That’s a resource I could never find with anybody else.”
In Hart’s showroom, a cabinet is assembled from scrap: the doors from an old European cabinet, glass panels found at an estate sale, a porch banister from an old house, legs from an old chair. The crinkly paint looks like it is in the middle of being chemically stripped.
A picture frame is made of paneling from an old beach cottage.
A kitchen island has legs from an old piano.
“People are looking for the patina of being in a family,” said Hart. “As the boomers get older, I think we are more appreciative of things that are flawed slightly. I tell people that the history of the piece is coming through and you shouldn’t be afraid of it. That’s the beauty of it.”
Hart grew up in this former timber town in southwestern Oregon and went to Stephens College in Missouri, where she got a Bachelor of Fine Arts, then a master’s from the University of Oregon, concentrating on art restoration. She has taught art in high school, coached cross country and done marketing for a local hospital. When a merger left her without a job, she turned to her hobby for a living, and continued her education in restoration.
“That’s when I discovered function was really important,” she said. “Beauty alone doesn’t necessarily hook into making a living. I started doing things like coat hangers and cupboards and things like that.”
Finishes are her specialty. She likes milk paints rather than enamels, because of their quiet depth. She covers her pieces with glazes – often a crinkly mix of materials that don’t want to mix – to pull the various elements together.
“A lot of this stuff you discover because you screwed something up,” Hart said. “I don’t want anything to look brand new. I want it to look like it’s been there forever.”
To get repeated use out of some unique pieces, like an old church’s Gothic window that she has turned into a series of mirrors, Hart makes vacuum molds and casts copies in Hydrostone, a kind of plaster with resin that is light and durable and retains detail well.
“There’s only going to be one of those that I ever find,” she said. “How much do you charge for it if you never find another one? Because this is a mold, I can make several of them.”
When she started 12 years ago, it was relatively easy to find materials. On her morning runs, she would stop at houses being torn down and ask for things. Now she combs estate sales, gets castoffs from antique dealers, and keeps her eye out at flea markets.
“People in their hearts don’t want to throw this stuff in a landfill,” she said.
Although objects crowd her workshop, she knows where every one is when the time comes to use it.
“I love my customers,” she said. “I have to really love the piece I do for them. And feel good about them, and that it’s going to a good home. I want them to be beautiful for a long time. I want them to be passed down. I don’t want to see them in a yard sale.”
Even if that’s where the pieces came from.
