Reuse, recycle, and think outside the (big) box
by Erica Gehrke
You know it: that sense of déjà vu when you walk into your friend’s (or your sister’s, or your neighbour’s) newly decorated condo. It could be that you couch-surfed there in another life, but more likely it’s because the furnishings are eerily reminiscent of your own, your coworker’s, and… the IKEA showroom.
In the name of originality—and in the wake of eco-consciousness—it’s time to banish “big box” from your mindset and replace it with another concept: creative reuse. Leading the way are some of Vancouver’s hippest artists and designers, who are taking salvaged, scavenged, and scrounged materials and transforming them into wacky and winsome pieces of home decor. Here are a few that have caught our eye
| 1 | Created from the flared bases of cedar logs discarded by B.C. forestry companies, Brent Comber floor lamps capture the beauty of a West Coast rainforest. Funky yet functional, the handcrafted, one-of-a-kind objets d’art put a whole new spin on the concept of natural light. brentcomber.com |
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2 | Old paint cans find new purpose in the hands of artist Susan Schroeder. The co-owner of Wanted, a Gastown home decor and plant care store, cleans the tins and covers them with such fanciful fare as pages torn from a 1908 French dictionary to create—voila—planters. Suddenly terra cotta seems downright blah. wantedvancouver.com |
| 3 | Straight Line Designs salvages trees devastated by the mountain pine beetle and transforms them into clever cabinetry. The unique blue grain—a hallmark of the reclaimed wood—is highlighted in designer Judson Beaumont’s hand-shaped, tumbled “river rocks” that adorn the drawers.straightlinedesigns.com |
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4 | For hip eco-babies, Contexture Design presents a mobile crafted from recycled black paper and salvaged, outdated road maps that portrays crows returning to a rookery. OK, crows may not be your first choice of feathered friend to hang above a crib, but Contexture’s Trevor Coghill and Nathan Lee assure us they are family-oriented birds that mate for life. contexture.ca |
| 5 | Cut from a single slab of reclaimed maple, Live Edge Design’s river rock dining table proves there’s new life for dead trees. The natural cracks, crevices, stripes, and burls are left intact to honour the natural appearance of leaf-bearers knocked down by storms or discarded by forestry companies. liveedgedesign.com |
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Writer Erica Gehrke is proud to say she’s recently transformed a tea canister into a pencil holder, a deep-dish serving platter into a moss garden, and a candelabra into a coat rack.
Do It Yourself
Thrift-store lovers, back-lane shoppers, and dumpster divers have long known that one person’s garbage is another person’s gold. And now websites like craigslist.org, kijiji.ca, and freecycle.org make it easy for DIY diehards to find their own fabulous fodder online and unleash their inner artiste.
For step-by-step how-to projects on turning junk into gems, visit readymademag.com or find the book ReadyMade: How to Make (Almost) Everything by Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne.
