green living
and started snatching up all the vintage modern.” Merrill’s vintage offerings now
focus on mid-century modern and upcycled, repurposed furnishings, some- thing the millennials have taken to. Te kids will continue to come around, he says. “If you go around Brooklyn, people are reusing and recycling antique furniture. With the antique market hit- ting bottom, it is hard to ignore it. As it bottoms out, kids are going to come back to these things.” Tere can be a cool factor in reusing
something that is old, unique and odd, he added. “Oddity and ugliness is kind of in fashion right now.” Alex Geriner, of Doorman Designs,
ANTIQUES RISING
Discovering the Green in ‘Brown’ Furniture by Yvette C. Hammett
F
ast food and fast fashion are com- mon in this amped-up world. Tere’s also fast furniture—the
kind that oſten comes in a box, assembly required. It’s made of particle board held together by toxic chemicals; it is oſten flimsy and it’s consuming forests at an alarming rate. But millennials love it. Tat’s why they’re sometimes called the IKEA generation. “Your grandmother’s big sideboard
and armoire are hard to sell,” says Todd Merrill, owner of the Todd Merrill Studio, a furniture and design gallery in New York City. “We have changed the way we live. Our houses are laid out differently— no more formal dining rooms. I think people are less inventive about how to repurpose, reuse and restore.” Grandma’s treasures, once passed
down for generations, are largely passé. Te new word for antiques is “brown furni- ture”; prices have plummeted 60 to 80 per- cent in two decades, say industry experts. Te youngsters want no part of them, even though they are hand craſted out of solid wood extracted from old-growth forests that took centuries to mature. Large retail chains cater to strong
30 Hudson County
NAHudson.com
consumer demand for disposable furniture, and it is driving a great deal of deforesta- tion, according to the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Tinkers (ALERT). IKEA’s own figures show that it uses 1 percent of the world’s commercial wood supply a year to manufacture these throwaway pieces. Te U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that 9,690 tons of furniture—both fast and slow—ended up in the nation’s landfills in 2015, the latest year for which statistics have been published. Te trend is at odds with millennials’
notable environmental sensibilities—and they do put a premium on authentic, handmade items and companies with social impact—so experts say the tide may be turning. Like the growing Slow Food movement, “slow” furniture enjoys a sense of character and provenance that doesn’t come in a box. When Merrill opened his furni-
ture studio in 2000, it consisted of half pristine antiques and half mid-century modern furniture. He quickly saw a trend of people snapping up the mid-century and leaving the handcraſted antiques behind. “I pulled things out of trash heaps in the Upper East Side. People came in
in New Orleans, began upcycling out of necessity. He had little money to furnish his 19th-century apartment. His need quickly became a business when the furnishings he created out of old wood pieces began flying out the door. “I think for millennials—I am a millennial—they want something with a story tied to it, some sort of bigger meaning. My genera- tion is all about experiences. If they can say, ‘I found this in a dumpster’ or ‘in a roadside flea market,’ any story is an investment for millennials.” Terry Gorsuch, whose side business
in Dolores, Colorado, Rustique ReInvin- tage, involves salvaging old theater chairs, church pews and other novel items, upcycling them and selling them for a tidy profit, says, “Tere is nothing special about a coffee table from IKEA. All our pieces have a story. Tey’re from a 1936 theater or an 1895 Grange Hall where farmers and ranchers met.” Gorsuch says he already has some
“hipster” millennials buying items like old lockers or other odd pieces that they mix and match. “When you take some- thing and put it back to use, you get a feeling of satisfaction,” he says. “Te informality of today allows for
the mix-and-match thing,” Merrill says. “Take an old door and repurpose it … Put it up in your house or upcycle it into a table. “What we are missing in our homes is character,” he says. “Repurposing is a very good thing to do.”
Yvette C. Hammett is an environmental writer based in Valrico, Florida. Connect at
YvetteHammett28@hotmail.com.
united photo studio/
Shutterstock.com
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