steel:
reclaimed rusty steel might not be the first material that springs to mind when you think of contemporary furniture (or any indoor furniture for that matter) but we tend to use it in our designs quite alot. we have always found inspiration from waste materials, and metal that has been discarded and left to go rusty has beautiful qualities to it.
the bright oranges and deep browns of rust compliment oak so well.
the pieces that we use are either flat plates that come from shipyards or unusual shaped pieces that we sometimes use for handles on furniture.
sometimes they are bolted with huge rusty nails to old blocks of oak and they are really difficult to remove without them bending out of shape, so we quite often have to bash them back into shape. Then we remove the excess rust, clean them up & treat the metal with a sealant so there is no further rust.
as well as that contrast of rusty steel with oak, we also love the way that new stainless steel or powder-coated steel compliments old oak too.
shiny industrial stainless steel or powder-coated black steel in perfectly straight pieces or box sections work so well with the narly old reclaimed oak that we use on our coffee tables.
our reclaimed rusty steel is often used as the sides & handles of our console tables and, when we very rarely find longer pieces of flat steel, we use them to wrap around the sides & top of our oak sideboards.
next: new cornish slate
images: top left: stainless steel & oak coffee table top right: rusty steel & oak sideboard bottom left: low steel & oak coffee table bottom right: rusty steel & oak console table with drawer
