Two Worlds - The Brandegee Blog

Ramblings on Crafting Useable Art (and other things that I find interesting)

Two Worlds

Posted on November 5, 2012

I live in a loft apartment overlooking the city of Pittsburgh, except when Ada and I are two hours east, in our antique log cabin in the middle of nowhere.

The city loft started as a bottling plant for the Duquesne Brewery and has the high ceilings and unbroken spaces you want in a loft apartment.  The windows are 6′ x 10″–five of them in our larger room–so when the shutters are open, we’re flooded with light.  We’ve collected American folk art and 18th century American furniture which I mix with furniture of my design.  It all fits.

The log cabin is very different, secluded, no city sounds, au naturale.  We sometimes stay there for a week or more at a time, walking, gardening, veging out, never leaving the property.  The furnishings are spare, some of my designs mixed in one room with the Saarinen tulip table I’m writing on and in the dining area 6 Vignelli handkerchief chairs, plus some early Bedford County antiques.

We think we have the best of both worlds.  In a way, that split allegiance also shows up in my furniture designs: antique beams and barn boards are usually the start, then we shape and combine them with glass, steel, canvas, etc.  Out comes contemporary furniture that combines old/new, weathered/sleek, and other dichotomies.  It works in both of our life spaces.  This Zig Zag table is in our loft dining area.

This is one of my personal favorite dining tables because of the juxtaposition of the heavy base sections and the long overhang of the glass.  The log zigs and zags create a near pedestal effect, with glass ends and center, and each measuring an even 30″

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