Stylish modern furniture is the dream of most, but what is style?
Fabio Scapin is an artisan of stylish modern furniture, a metalworker, and a craftsman who works with metal to create high quality professional and commercial fittings.
His work exposes him to a wide range of designs and applications where metal is the skeleton or even the final product. And he notices the value of the waste that returns to the recycler for melting and refining. Particularly, he noticed the large quantity of empty 200 litre (44 gallon) drums that were the source of cleaning products and dispersants. And he dreamt.
What he saw was stylish modern furniture from recycled drums.
Recycling of these large industrial drums is not new. Fifty years ago we created Rot-B-Cues with a drum cut in half, hinged down one side and mounted sideways on two tripods.
A small electric motor was connected to a shaft that then turned in slowly in two bearings, one on each end. A whole piglet or lamb was placed on the ’spit’, the bottom half of the drum was partly filled with BBQ coals which were lit and, 5 hours later, after copious quantities of beer had been consumed, the roast was ready for consumption.
On the Pacific Northwest coast of USA, the same principle was used to smoke salmon, freshly caught – and it was not surprisingly called a Smoke-B-Cue as the lid was closed during cooking. Yet, while these ’inventions’ were utilitarian and engaged young men in creativity and companionship, they were hardly elegant, often unreliable, and not particularly attractive to the gentler sex.
Whether Fabio considered these limitations of prior applications of recycled drums is not certain, but more likely, from his background he instinctively understood that quality is the ground rule for all sustainable, stylish and modern furniture products.
When we first visited his workshop near Vicenza, we were astonished by this fine bright blue and white arm chair standing on a pedestal in front of us.
The only recognition of the original drum was the shape.
Each drum is selected and carefully cleaned to bring up the fresh metal. The required shapes are cut out. All metal components such as hinges and handles are hand-made in the metal workshop. The engineered metal skeleton for the chair is installed and welded in place.
Metal drawers, cup holders and shelves are incorporated. The final metal assembly is then painted according to the customer specification with a high gloss finish. Finally the furnishings are added, cushioning and upholstery of top quality once again to suit the design wishes of the client.
Fabio has designed and produced a range of stylish modern furniture that sets a unique style message. Complete lounge room or recreation room settings can be produced to suit any colour scheme, theme and atmosphere. Double sofas, children’s chairs (created from smaller drums), tables, sets of shelves, what you want Fabio Scapin can create the solution, and the outcome is your unique indoor or outdoor setting of stylish furniture.
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