Showing posts with label restoration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restoration. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Curb Collective Update

As our regular followers will know, last year nearly 20 students graduated from Reuse Repair Recycle Furniture - A partnership with TAFENSW Outreach and The Bower designed to teach skills to the local community.This year many of those students are continuing their study, workshopping ideas and business models to build a social enterprise that suits them. They also meet weekly to continue to hone their repair skills, working on a number of chairs and small foot stools in need of reuse and repair love.


Last week the group completed their first commission. Karen's chair was a street find - she saw the potential but didn't find the time to restore it herself (Sound familiar?!). Curb Collective also saw the potential for a contemporary new look for the piece and set to work stripping the yellow paint and upholstering the seat.
Although they bought fabric to complete the job, the group was keen to stick to The Bower's waste not ethos, and selected a panel of discontinued designer fabric from a remnant warehouse.


We couldn't be more excited to see what the group will come up with next, or how they will evolve, so stay tuned!

If you have a question, a query or a commission for Curb Collective send email to curbcollective@bower.org.au.

- Maaike

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Finders Keepers, winners grinners


This week we found out our application to Uber-cool design/hand made market Finders Keepers has been accepted. These guys have a great reputation, a great crowd of followers and a great set up.


Carriageworks at Everleigh is a dream space for furniture display, being urban industrial and hugely spacious. We're ecstatic just thinking about the hustle & bustle.

Fiona, Claire and I have been busy working on promotional posters and a brochure about the benefits of Reuse & Repair to spread the word before and during the event.

 
All of this has the crew thinking hard about the future - we all want to keep going, but as what? A course? A business? A social Enterprise or a People's Shed? And more importantly, what shall they call themselves?

Devastated to find "Bowerhaus" is already taken...


- Maaike

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Business Time!


Last week we stood back and took a furniture count - We've started no less than TWENTY FIVE pieces in 9 weeks. Now we're at the business end of the semester, we've split into smaller working parties, working in twos and threes to determine the final look of each chair.



Miki finished her pair danes with a bedspread akin to woven sunshine from Pollyanna's own collection. I like to think of these as a pair of kitsch-en chairs. They remind me of kitten heels and martinis and Summer - all good things!*



*Good things outside of a workshop environment. Inside, we like steel caps and fruit cup cordial with our Summer.

Mark has been working patiently on his own black velvet glamour piece. We're waiting for diamante studs to arrive from China to finish off his elegant concept - fingers crossed they come for next week!



Min and Leslie found themselves responsible for a plantation chair that has done the rounds, so to speak. The girls began the piece late last Semester, then Fiona and Anthony have pitched, Stuart and Mick helped spring it, Claire and Glen padded it, and someone else again did the linseed oil!


Min took some time to sew up a lovely neutral patchwork for the final upholstery during the week.


Peter put a few coats on his ply stool and sanded down the chrome legs - You'd never know it used to be a timber laminate chair!



Cathy was hard at work helping all of us redowel, drill, clamp and sand as necessary, and even took the time to show us a little bit of home maintenance - the art of masonry drilling and plugging is a very useful one to know!

All of us are super excited as we were accepted in to The Finders Keepers Market.
Not only is it one of the most selective markets in Sydney, it draws a HUGE crowd, allowing us to promote our Reuse & Repair ethos to plenty of customers, just in time to inform their christmas shopping.

More info on that coming soon!

- Maaike






Thursday, October 13, 2011

A little bit fancy

Yesterday we took some fancy photos of the group's work so far as part of the Redfern TAFE/Bower Project




The work so far has been so great we wanted to get something nice for the group, so we went to visit our friends at Bev's Remnant House who gave us great prices on some beautiful remnants we can piece together - fitting in nicely with our belief in lifecycle extension wherever possible! You can see some of those pieces below. Will they end up on the plantation chair? We'll have to wait and see what each working group decides!


We're gearing up towards a final exhibition/end of year extravaganza in late November/early December - Stay tuned!