California-based Motoart had what he was after. They buy up junked aircraft -- everything from Second World War fighter planes to modern jet parts -- and transform them into furniture: desks, tables, even sofas. Hill opted for a coffee table devised from a section of a C-119 cargo plane.
"I wanted something with a real edge that spoke to the influence of ultra-lounge atmosphere, as well as pure modernism," says Hill, who founded a company called Liquid Web.
Next, he bought a TBM Avenger engine cowling as wall art, an F22 Phantom mirror, and two other desks, made from a cannibalized B25 and 747. The former sits in Hill's Scottsdale, Ariz., home. "I'll probably have enough parts to make a complete airplane, at some point," he says.
Call it industrial chic. Furniture and accessories this year are flaunting their rivets, welds and obvious mechanical origins.
Rooms already dressed in mid-century furniture seem the most receptive to these elements, which require the balancing effect of more masculine silhouettes, heftier textures.
Interior designers are making liberal use of vintage components. A Miami penthouse by Judi Male, featured in October's Metropolitan Home, boasts several leather and steel pieces by Jacques Charpentier, Vladimir Kagan and Maria Pergay.
Cottage Living's 2008 Idea Home includes Jackie Terrell's dining table crafted from a slab of lumber mounted on antique movie camera tripods. And October's Elle Decor shows an old apothecary cabinet in the weekend home office of designers Richard Lambertson and John Truex.
While many pieces are sleek, almost aerodynamic, others emphasize the drama of scale -- think gigantic kleig-like floor fixtures, factory work tables or Hill's engine cowling.
Industrial-style furnishings aren't new. Marcel Breuer and other modernists in the early 20th century embraced the idea that man and machine could coexist. Mass production techniques and new materials excited these designers, who sought innovative ways to adapt them for the home. It was a marriage of purpose and esthetics.
During the 1920s in France, Charlotte Perriand created chaises, swivel and sling chairs for Le Corbusier (an early photograph shows her sprawled in one of her creations, wearing a necklace of industrial ball bearings).
She approached Peugeot about adapting their aluminum bicycle tubing to furniture, but when they turned her down, she went to Thonet, the bentwood chair firm. Their collaboration resulted in a collection for the 1929 Salon d'Automne called "Equipment for the Home," featuring metal-based leather and canvas furniture, and a glass-topped desk supported by a pair of biplane wing stays.
In the 1930s, mechanical engineer Warren McArthur II created glamorous aluminum and upholstered pieces that became the rage of Hollywood, and that command high prices at auction today.
British designer Terence Conran, who has a propeller on the wall of his London office, has long been a fan of mechanical objects. His newest collection, Inspirations, features two robots by Brooklyn sculptor Douglas Bennett cobbled together from vintage and everyday machine parts.
Find Steelwood pieces and the iconic Nine-O polished aluminum naval office chair here too, as well as a one-of-a-kind sorting desk that once serviced a post office in England.
Other retailers also are offering pieces with an industrial turn: Crate and Barrel has a round mirror studded with a starburst of brass-toned rods. At CB2, patinaed iron makes an intriguing trio of wall shelves. Target's Thosa chair and Orangeskin's Ad Hoc are webbed sculptures -- form and function brought together in metal. And a clock from Garman Designs, fashioned from shiny gears, looks like a set piece from Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
The trend is advancing throughout the home furnishings marketplace. A wave of commercial-grade trash bins, bread boxes, toasters and other kitchen accoutrements has come ashore, at price points high and low.
CB2 sold out of the first run of Rivet dining tables; more are due in November.
The locker we all remember from high school has been repurposed for just about every room in the house, often in vivid hues.
Both PBTeen and IKEA stock bedroom furniture in powder-coated palettes, while CB2 has a luscious green rolling file cabinet and desk.
--Associated Press
