Green Furniture Design to end retail operations

Doug Green of Eco-friendly Style Furniture says the choice to stop promoting custom-made furniture at his showroom on Commercial Street will permit him to sell his styles directly to businesses in need of cost-saving, sustainable production processes.

"It's time for me to focus on moving this idea along," says Green, 54, president and owner with the high-end furnishings organization. "This is the challenge that confronts me."

Green is hoping manufacturers' interest in generating much more high-end furnishings with much less money will fuel demand for his designs.

"We are in discussions with several main American furnishings manufacturers who are interested in licensing our intellectual property and style services," Green mentioned in a press release announcing the decision. "I'm really excited about the prospect of our styles reaching a broader audience although working to strengthen the position of American producers in the global marketplace."

Green, originally an industrial designer, has been making furnishings with an eye for sustainability because 1993. But the recession has forced him to shift his business model from promoting retail to licensing his sustainable style models to other companies.

Earlier this month, he trimmed his function force from seven full-time employees to two, plus one part-time worker. "The economy played a factor inside a sense that I was working so hard to run my company, that I didn't have sufficient time to do design," Eco-friendly claims.

Soon the 2,400-square-foot showroom is going to be available for lease or put up for sale. Eco-friendly claims he will either lease out the entire room to a brand new tenant or perhaps a portion of it, based on what the marketplace will bear. Until a brand new proprietor or tenant is discovered, the showroom is going to be open by appointment only. He claims the Eco-friendly Design Furnishings web site will also be taken down and re-launched with a much smaller item list. "We strategy to take our last orders within the next two weeks."

After that, he and his lone woodworker will consider orders on a more restricted basis and make customized chairs, desks, book instances, dining room tables and other pieces at his 9,000-square-foot shop located within the Portland Star Match Co. building, also on Commercial Street. He claims the woodworker will also help construct prototypes of various pieces to assist him market his styles to prospective buyers.

Following promoting his furnishings to clients nationwide and beyond, Eco-friendly is confident he will discover his share of manufacturers to carry on his styles.

"Green Design Furniture has created a reputation and brand that is recognized close to the country. Our following step is going to be to license the designs and technology to others," Eco-friendly says.

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'More options than ever' in garden furniture

The popularity of garden furnishings is rising and you will find now much more choices than ever for people looking to accessorise their outdoor spaces, according to an expert.

Paula McCooey, writing for the Ottawa Citizen, mentioned that the days of small picnic tables and aluminium chairs are gone and there's a large amount of stylish garden furniture on offer for outdoor lovers.

"People are willing to spend a little more money for larger pieces, which translates into bigger gatherings and outdoor dinner and cocktail parties," she said.

Outdoor wicker was identified like a top trend for 2010, with individuals able to choose pieces to suit their living room.

Those who wish to go down this route for their back yard may want to select Leisuregrow garden furnishings, which includes a weave variety created from man-made Polyethylene.

This powerful, durable and highlight flexible substance is created to be impervious to rain, salt water and chlorine and has also been tested to have the highest resistance to UV light.

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First major survey of work by furniture master Charles Rohlfs at the Huntington until Sept. 6

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When it comes to American Craftsman furnishings, Gustav Stickley is often considered the master. His mass-produced, catalog-sold chairs and tables flooded the market nearly a century ago and produced among the world’s first furniture brands. Less recognized, nevertheless, may be the work of Charles Rohlfs, a contemporary of Stickley, whose more eclectic but equally influential furniture is on exhibit at the Huntington Library through Sept. 6.

“The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs” showcases the designer who never got the attention that his competitor Stickley did. Yet prior to the Arts & Crafts Movement was “Rohlfs Style.” Rohlfs' concepts borrowed heavily from the 19th century Aesthetic movement (“art for art’s sake”), but as this show proves, his function is thoroughly original.

Rohlfs, initially trained in science, attended Cooper Union in New York for an art education, worked as a pattern maker and designer of cast-iron stoves. He even was an actor before he began to design furniture. It wasn’t until the 1890s that Rohlfs started making furnishings with the help of his wife, mystery novelist Anna Katharine Green.

Influenced by architect Louis Sullivan, Rohlfs' ornamental works belie their simple structures. “Rohlfs’s structures are generally quite plain with simple geometric shapes creating the overall framework, even where elaborate flourishes of carving are present,” writes Bruce Barnes, founder and president with the American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation, who provided the forward to the catalog.

Almost all of his pieces are oak, but each is uniquely and creatively carved and shaped. 1 may notice Japanese influences in a piece, Moorish or Scandinavian in another. Rohlfs_lampBut it is precisely this wide variety of decoration that makes these pieces uniquely Rohlfs'. “The form may be the ornamentation, and the ornamentation is the form,” writes Barnes. Sometimes the inspiration isn't so clear. For his striking 1898 desk chair, pictured at right, the trapezoidal backrest is decorated with patterns replicating the cellular structure of oak wood as seen via a microscope.

Among the 44 works in the exhibition are chairs, desks, tables and accessories such as plant-stands and lamps. Historic photographs, rare books and a short documentary are included as well.

The simple life: Furniture makers get back to basics

Back within the 1950s, life was simple and so was furnishings. Whether it was handcrafted in Missouri, machine-made in North Carolina or imported from Denmark, the lines were clean, the materials raw and the usage clear. A chair was just a chair.

Somewhere along the way, although, we got lost. Through the turbulent ’60s, the geometric, mod-filled ’70s, the excessive, Formica-driven ’80s and the confusing ’90s, most producers and furniture makers saw money in points wrapped in glitz. Even at TJ Maxx, Target and Crate & Barrel, Hollywood glam, silver, gold and sequins controlled the aisles.
But then 9/11, the green movement, a return to nature and a recession hit. Bling and luxury became pretentious.

Really, isn’t it impossible to catch up with the Joneses’ in an electric-powered car? When it comes to the home, we’re finally entering a decade where less is once again more. After years of extravagance, we’re seeing a return to the basics of life.

Nowhere is that more clear than at this year’s International Contemporary Furnishings Fair (ICFF), where a return to relaxation and simplicity is apparent in the products on display at America’s largest furniture show. Each year, the event sets the tone for the home objects you’ll soon see in a store nearby.

Hammocks, indoor and outdoor, were everywhere at the giant event, held this week at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. A table woven from one piece of metal, a desk with a hidden drawer that looks so easy a child could build it, a clock that tells you time in words, and a tiny eco-friendly steel fireplace that burns ethanol and can heat a small room — all of these echo a move away from furniture you must assemble or anything you bring within the house that seems complicated.

Even the names of the objects had been whittled down. “Snug” for a furniture line out of Charlotte, N.C. “Boite,” or box in French, for small rosewood boxes made by a recently graduated design student from Montreal. “Prost,” meaning simple in Serbian, for a bench created of steel with a mesh top. “Homework” for a desk created of glass, metal and wood. “Hammy” for a hammock that works inside the house. You could almost look at an object and guess its name.

One of the more interesting new pieces of furniture came from a designer in Germany. His girlfriend wanted a round bed, but the cost of a custom-made, fitted mattress was absurd, and impractical. Taking a cue from a rocking chair and four-poster bed, he built her a rocking bed, an actual bed frame shaped in a circle that rocks back and forth. Think of it as a giant cradle for adults. Designer Michael Kloker titled it "Private Cloud."

“What can be more easy than this?” asks Kloker, who’s from Stuttgart. “I’m not with that girl anymore, but I still have and love the bed.”

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Sale of the week: Lacroix atelier furniture

Christian Lacroix was among the brightest stars within the fashion firmament when he opened his original atelier in 1987 about the ground floor of a sumptuous Parisian town house in rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The look of the location had to become in maintaining with his striking couture creations, so he chose the renowned interior decorators Elizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti to create a Baroque “theatre of fashion” filled with opulent furnishings set against richly coloured walls and bright floor coverings.

Inspiration came from objects for example the “mask” wall lights that Garouste and Bonetti had created for that jet-setter’s nightclub Le Privilege and, in contrast, in the simplest forms of nature such as tree branches and foliage. For a lot more than two decades, the atelier hosted high-profile Christian Lacroix clients including Nicole Kidman, Helen Mirren, Christina Aguilera and Madonna before last year’s recession forced the brand’s owner, US retailer the Falic Group, to close down the haute couture side of the business. Now, in what Sotheby’s describes since the first sale of an “oeuvre d’art totale” from the second half of the 20th century, the contents with the atelier will be dispersed in this 100-lot auction that could realise as much as €400,000.

Highlights: The star whole lot may have limited appeal because it comprises a pair of filigree-pattern iron gates and an arched best with a combined height of more than 18ft. The gates, which graced the front of the atelier, are estimated at €20,000-€30,000 while a 16ft sofa in the “grand salon” is expected to fetch up to €15,000. Much more manageable objects consist of several with the famous gilded bronze wall lights in the form of grotesque masks (€10,000-€15,000) and some distinctive wood cabinets adorned with lacquered sycamore branches (€4,000-€6,000).

Also up for grabs are tree-trunk stools, a wood and wrought-iron fitting room complete with curtains, mirrors and lights, and chairs and banquettes upholstered in acid-coloured fabrics. The clothes racks that as soon as held a few of the excellent Lacroix creations are also on offer, as well since the handles from the glass front door, some metal drinks trays and even the waste paper bin – which can be, of course, remarkably stylish.

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NOW Furniture building for sale

The commercial property known as the NOW furniture creating is heading on the market for $7.12 million in a court-ordered sale.

This high-profile creating at 2269 Douglas St. is among a number of properties put up for sale following much more than 20 businesses inside the Traveller's Inn Group, owned by Victoria's John Asfar, went into bankruptcy last September.

Mischa Gringras of Colliers International Victoria is listing the 41,000-square-foot creating.

Zoned for commercial use, the 10-year-old creating functions 7.6-metre ceilings, a mezzanine, underground parking and passenger and freight elevators, Colliers said.

It was constructed as a high-quality store and warehouse for that Wosk Furnishings chain, after which became NOW Furnishings outlet. Asfar bought the building within the spring of 2005.

Asfar had plans to create the building a centrepiece of his unsuccessful strategy to establish a casino in downtown Victoria. The creating has not been utilized because NOW Furnishings closed in 2004, although it has served as a area for the annual Times Colonist book sale in past years.

Colliers is acting for that John Volken Foundation, which has the very first mortgage on the building, held under the name of Vancouver Island Entertainment Centre Holdings Ltd.

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Maria Pergay, 79, Furniture Designer

Last weekend, although New York City was overrun by style enthusiasts in town for that International Contemporary Furnishings Fair, Maria Pergay, a 79-year-old Parisian furniture designer fairly unknown in this nation, was ensconced inside a nautical modernist room at the Maritime Hotel. She was in New York not for the furniture fair — an event, it turns out, that she has in no way heard of — but to show her most recent function in the Demisch Danant gallery in Chelsea (including a sofa of broken bricks she is shown sitting on). Those expecting a woman of her age to create gentle, feminine, upholstered pieces appropriate for a Paris pied-à-terre may be surprised by what may be Ms. Pergay’s material of choice for decades: stainless steel.

What's it about stainless metal which you love?

Everybody is scared of stainless metal, but we possess a link — there is something deep within between me and stainless steel. This substance which appears so strong, difficult and cold is sweet and not sharp, and it matches with everything. It's a good contrast for colors and other materials.

You will find four pieces on this display, such as cube tables that look like boxes following an explosion. It seems just a little bit violent.

It is my wish that individuals have at house next to them something which asks them questions, you see. To make them realize that behind every thing could be hidden some other points. This cube — it’s a plain cube, appears like any type of cube — but it includes a treasure.

You imply the snake wood you see through the blown-out front?

Sure. It is lively, colored and soft.

So you are peeling the steel off, like a layer, to reveal something else.

Sure, it’s very French.

What concerning the sofa? The damaged bricks appear a little bit violent as nicely.

Nothing is more popular and ordinary than a sofa, right? But this one is made of broken pieces of bricks. The bricks are solid bronze covered with nickel. It is a little bizarre. Bricks are something you build houses with; this is what's left following the items are damaged down, but it is still something strong. You are able to take them and construct some thing again.

Strength appears to become a theme in your work.

It's very important. You can display, in truth, that, yes, these pieces begin to become accommodating and soft and familiar inside your home. It is a mirage of my furniture. But I do not like the word furniture. Individuals do not require my pieces to become furnishings, to utilize like a location to put plates or blankets or whatever.

If your function isn’t furniture, what's it?

An expression of — what can I say, perhaps like it came from Mars or the moon?

You mean it’s a little bit alien?

Yes.

Is that what you’re like like a individual — to other individuals, you may seem hard on the outside or just very independent, but inside you’re delicate and fragile?

I don’t know. In general, everybody has a pinch of poetry inside. Not everybody gets to see that, and that is the challenge: to light the light within.

But they are able to find out some thing about on their own by looking at the items. If they pass by and they stop, that signifies there’s a connection among the piece and themselves.

But an costly connection!

I should select another material that's not so expensive. I don’t know why I've such a contact with this substance.

Well, you have a lengthy history.

Would you say that your romantic relationship with steel is the longest relationship of one's life?

Since I started every thing, in 1957. It's my greatest marriage.

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