By Karla Klein Albertson
\nFor years now, we’ve been reinventing old factories and offices as new urban living spaces.
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\n So it seems fitting that vintage industrial elements are being reclaimed to complement these often-gritty interiors.<\/p>\n
And as the enthusiasm for 20th-century modern spreads to the artifacts of industrial design, pieces are appearing at mainstream antiques shows, mixed and matched with more traditional furniture and decorative arts – much as period architectural elements did a decade or so ago.<\/p>\n
At last month’s Americana at the Piers show in New York, the tag on a table with wheels read: “Stunning art form that is functional as well.” Exhibitor David Leggett, who was there with his wife\/partner, Kim, explains, “That’s an old piece of bowling-alley floor put on the wheel setup for a hay rake. Somebody made it into a cart… I call it a coffee table.”<\/p>\n
The table was a perfect example of good industrial design, with both an attractive aesthetic and the ability to transport a generator. Such rolling tables, along with gear-framed mirrors and metal bins, fit easily into edgy loft settings with slate floors, concrete walls and steel appliances.<\/p>\n
“I like industrial,” David Leggett says. “We have so many customers who are in L.A., New York and Austin, Texas, I’m always trying to get things ready to go to the next event.”<\/p>\n
The Leggetts also produce a line of inventive lighting created from salvage and scrap metal. One involves iron spirals, which Leggett took off rolls of metal, with a naked bulb at the base. These can be hung singly or in clusters.<\/p>\n
“David has a great ability to put together what I see,” Kim Leggett says. The results have been featured in catalog shots for Thos. Moser’s handcrafted furniture, and the couple’s design mix has attracted attention from magazines such as Architectural Digest.<\/p>\n
“One of our best-selling items, which we can’t find anymore, has been driving-range ball baskets coated in rubber. If we had a hundred of those, we could sell them,” Kim Leggett says. “In New York, we sold baskets that were used for gathering crabs. The lights are all minimal in design, the basket becomes the cage.”<\/p>\n
One customer for the Leggetts’ lighting was New York-area interior designer Marsha Russell.<\/p>\n
“I was particularly interested in lighting… and also ‘industrial plumbing,’ if you will,” Russell says. “At various Pier shows, I purchased a number of slate sinks – really heavy, very large, sort of industrial-looking – for a client who really wants to have that feeling.”<\/p>\n
But does the look work in homes that aren’t lofts?<\/p>\n
“We have a client who has three children and one on the way, and we did her kitchen and family room. You wouldn’t walk in and say it’s industrial, but it has a masculine sense to it,” Russell says.<\/p>\n
“It’s a fairly large space with a palette of grays and browns, fairly large pieces of furniture, and antiques mixed with transitional. The hardware that we chose for the kitchen and the lighting has a definite industrial feel to it – it looks new in a good way.”<\/p>\n
Russell says she uses industrial elements whenever she can.<\/p>\n
“I love the earthiness of it, the texture, the scale – in the right place, there’s nothing quite like it,” she says. “It involves a reinvention of these objects. They can be reworked, or not. But they are used in a different way, in a different room, in a home versus a factory.”<\/p>\n
The actual reworking part might be a do-it-yourself project, depending on your skills as an electrician, carpenter or blacksmith – things can get a bit more involved than attaching antique sewing-machine legs to a wooden board. And it helps if you have a good eye for possibilities.<\/p>\n
Keith Merry of Garden Park Antiques, a 25,000-square-foot showroom and workshop in Nashville, has the necessary skills.<\/p>\n
“We manufacture fine ironwork, so I have the ability to create this look – I’ve really become a furniture designer,” Merry says.<\/p>\n
The firm’s Web site, www.gardenpark.com, displays a large inventory of fancy antique iron and architecturals in addition to Merry’s industrial constructions.<\/p>\n
“I’m always looking for unusual pieces out of factories that I can convert. I do incredible coffee tables out of old pallets with wheels,” he says. “I sold over 200 that came out of a factory. They’re all gone, and I’m starting to manufacture a line of new ones using vintage wood.”<\/p>\n
At a recent antiques and garden show, Merry used factory lights with shades that were reconfigured for home use. “These came out of [an] old Pepsi bottling company. We make the bars, and I have them all wired up.”<\/p>\n
He says industrial style is spreading from the coasts to the nation’s interior.<\/p>\n
“I was selling this stuff up to Chicago, New York and Miami, but nobody in Nashville wanted it. But recently I sold the coolest industrial metal coffee table to a couple in Memphis, and it’s going in their loft.”<\/p>\n
Industrial even has begun to venture out of urban areas to suburban and rural homes. Several of Merry’s pieces are featured in Urban Country Style by Nancy Gent and Elizabeth Betts Hickman, to be published by Gibbs Smith in April ($29.95).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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