Sustaining fragments from the past

Some people enjoy poking through antique stores; others love hardware stores.  There are few places I’d rather linger than The Brass Knob, Washington’s store that sells reclaimed and restored building fragments from door knobs to stained glass windows.  This is where you go to find the unusual; when Crate & Barrel products all merge into a mass of over-indulgent consumerism.  These are the wonderful things made when hand carving and expressive ornament displayed extraordinary craft.  Ron Allan started the store in 1981 with a partner just when the historic preservation movement was gaining traction, and just when people were restoring their historic homes.  Ten years later, Ron took the bigger things:   carved wood panels, doors and mantles, heavy timber, stonework, cast iron radiators, plumbing fixtures and fittings, and special windows to The Brass Knob Back Doors Warehouse, a massive yard of arranged stone, metal and wood fragments.

Two years ago I interviewed Ron.  His point of view about salvaging was that first the piece had to be great, not junk, and that these fragments were capable of not only replacing some missing element, but in new work they could also become the focal point or iconic marker for an otherwise banal design.  He did not mean to suggest that such fragments could only be used to “spice up” a design as an art object; he thought big too.  He talked about a beautiful building in Baltimore that had been knocked down after a fire (demolition by neglect, he speculated) and how he spent a month working through the rubble with a forklift sorting over 300 large granite stones with hand-tooled rusticated faces.  These he thought might become walls in a new park – he wasn’t quite sure – but he did know they were too special to waste.

Ron especially enjoyed telling me about the 150 cast iron radiators he ships to Belgium annually.  Apparently they lacked the right combination of material, technology, style and craftsmen that American had when hot-water heating became popular here.  For Ron, sustainability meant re-using, but when designers want to do so, they have to know where to look.  You also need the trained eye.  An old piece of wood may look promising, but that assumption takes experience.

Unfortunately, the place closed last spring.  Some stock was sold to the Community Forklift, but it’s not the same.  When I went there looking for wrought iron fencing, I found a junk yard with discounted builder’s cast-offs and scraps, run by a few well-meaning and over-worked people.  But, no great stuff anymore.  It reminded me of the struggles I had to feed my young son who was allergic to everything.  With no Whole Foods, we had to manage with co-op health food stores and their sawdust-like cookies.  And is this where we are today?  If designers don’t take advantage of places like the Brass Knob Warehouse and work re-purposed fragments into their new designs, then we lose the ability to do so.