Elegant Salvage
By Sara Settegast Hare
Diablo Magazine
April 2004
Looking for a signature piece to make a statement in your study? Or an objet d’ art to up the cool quotient of your formal living room? What you need is a little edge, a little urban, and a lot of recycled. And lucky for you, the East Bay is bristling with salvaged, found, and vintage objects that make designers drool.
Recycled treasures are all the rage. Just ask the dressed-in0black decorators with horn-rim glasses, the real estate staging designers, and the Hollywood prop managers who frequent the East Bay’s salvage yards and trendy home design shops.
Bohemian Berkeley is the center of the salvaged-stuff universe, boasting shops that were rescuing doorknobs and faucets before everyone else though it was cool. But the vintage vibe has spread into Oakland and Alameda, too, making the East Bay playground for folks who want to make the past part of their present.
Some items (mantels, ornate doors, gates) are reclaimed from historic buildings undergoing renovation. Some are discarded items that have simply found new life.
Whatever your style, you’ll find treasures that would make Granny smile. At the same time, it might make you feel good about helping the environment.
The Wooden Duck
2919 Seventh St., Berkeley, (510) 848-3575, www.thewoodenduck.com
No decoys here. All the furniture at the Wooden Duck, from beds to garden benches, is the real thing, made of solid wood recycled from old barns and warehouses in California and the Pacific Northwest.
The aged Douglas fir is usually first or second growth, offering a more resilient surface with tighter rings than currently available commercial wood. Fashioned into furniture at the Berkeley factory, this old wood is strikingly beautiful.
Old-growth wood is longer and wider than the lumber produced these days, explains owner Eric Gellerman. “We get lots of custom orders from wineries who want a 12-foot-long solid table. That’s no problem for us.”
The Wooden Duck’s selection of dining tables, chairs, dressers, coffee tables, and credenzas is seemingly limitless. And if you don’t like fir, how about teak? For a touch of the exotic, the Wooden Duck carries a line of imported furniture made with recycled teat at its factory in Java (Gellerman first went there as an exchange student). A selection of hand-painted Javanese and Sumatran screens adds an interesting element to the 18,000-square foot showroom. Not to be missed.
WHO SHOPS HERE: Nesting homeowners, winery owners.
MOST PRICELESS TREASURE: Century-old painted panel from Java with flowers and flying horses, $2000.
CHEAPEST FIND: The Bone Yard, where chairs with nearly invisible imperfections are available for up to 50% their original price, ranging from $50-$70.
ODDITIES: Indonesian cow bells, $7-$25.
When freelancer Sara Settegast Hare isn’t writing for Diablo, she’s filling her new Walnut Creek home with her own collection of priceless junk.
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