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Artist creates urban art from industrial parts
by John Mackie Pieces of Vancouver history get a new beginning, Friday, September 17, 2004 Ross MacMillan is the kind of guy who can see art in manhole covers, fire hydrants, and big old mechanical gears. Then he turns them into stylish furniture. MacMillan is the founder of Industrial Artifacts, a Gastown business that recycles old industrial pattern moulds and equipment into tables, chandeliers, mirrors, beds, bookshelves and anything else he thinks up. It isn't just a business for the personable entrepreneur, it's a passion, even a calling. MacMillan's family used to own Progressive Engineering in False Creek, one of the oldest and biggest foundries in Vancouver. When Progressive Engineering shut down a few years ago, it had buildings full of thousands of old wooden patterns. MacMillan had been fascinated by the patterns since he was a kid ("I saw them as my Lego, my Mechano"), and decided to make some art pieces and furniture with them. They were an instant hit at a gallery show, and in 2000 he opened his store at 49 Powell, on the main floor of one of Vancouver's most beloved heritage buildings, the Hotel Europe. Industrial Artifacts makes unique stuff, such as a wild Honduran mahogany and yellow pine chandelier fashioned from a trio of circular gate valve and air intake patterns. MacMillan calls it "Alien Landing," because it resembles the spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A chic bar or sofa table is made from an old joiner machine (that originally planed wood) with a Douglas fir top and rosewood trim. A glass coffee table features old propeller blades from a boat. Other designs are almost like found art. His round Swirly end table is a cable roll pattern for an electric winch stacked on top of another smaller cable roll pattern, with marine plywood on top and red cedar on the bottom. It's called Swirly because there are swirly designs in the wood, etched into it from the time it was turned on a lathe. "We don't like sanding things down because the patterns have all these great marks," he notes. Pieces like this look simultaneously old and new, historic and futuristic. "I don't know how to really classify us," he says. "We're kind of urban rustic modern." His unique designs have been written about in numerous magazines (from Canadian House and Home to Saturday Night and Wallpaper, and he estimates 30 per cent of his sales are to international customers (including Michael Stipe of the rock band R.E.M. and William Randolph Hearst II). He just shipped a table to someone in Geneva, Switzerland. The international attention is great, but MacMillan is very much Vancouver-oriented. He doesn't just want to sell furniture, he wants to educate the masses on Vancouver's industrial history. "I think it's really important that we remember all the businesses that used to be down there [in False Creek], that built this city," he says. To that end, every piece comes with a tag explaining the origin of its parts. "I think everyone likes something that has a story to it," he explains. "It makes everything so interesting. Some people's story is where they bought it, how they spent $20,000 on this piece. But our story is how this was a pattern for casting steel parts for a paper machine from Powell River Pulp and Paper, which your company Pacific Press used to buy paper from. "People don't realize until they come here how interconnected so much of the industry was to their daily lives. We just took these things for granted, but this is how our world was maintained." The Progressive Engineering building at 360 West First in Vancouver is being dismantled (Polygon will be redeveloping the site as high rise condos). MacMillan was able to salvage most of the old patterns from the building, storing them in a warehouse near the store. But the warehouse isn't just full of Progressive Engineering patterns. MacMillan has also culled patterns from several other industrial works, including Terminal City Iron Works, Reliance Foundry, Reliance Motor and Machinery, BC Marine Shipyards, Letson and Burpee and Canadian White Pines Mill. "When businesses shut down, it's really hard for me to say no when someone's throwing something out," he says. "We try and reuse it." One of the benefits of commissioning a piece from Industrial Artifacts is that customers can look through the patterns in the warehouse to pick out one they like. Tom Theodorakis picked out a big gear which became a mirror, and also found some patterns for a steam turbine that became a coffee table. "You can go through there and let your imagination run wild," says Theodorakis, who has four Industrial Artifacts pieces in his Point Grey home. "I like the history behind the furniture, the fact that each piece is original and a one-off. You're not going to see it in somebody else's home or in a magazine." Most of the furniture in the 2,500-square-foot store is by MacMillan or his friend Johann Wieghardt, a master woodworker. But he also takes in similar work by cutting-edge local artists, craftsmen and designers like Arnt Arntzen, Ken Clarke, and Kevin MacKenzie. Costs range from $65 for a small gear mirror to $1,100 for the Swirly end table and $3,800 for the Alien Landing chandelier. The furniture has wound up in all sorts of places, from heritage homes to Whistler chalets and ultra-modern lofts. A pair of giant gear wheels even popped up in the Ben Affleck/Uma Thurman movie Paycheck, which was filmed up the street last summer. Page 2 of 3 Print Story - canada.com network 9/17/2004 http://www.canada.com/components/printstory/printstory4.aspx?id=e5bab0dc-7192-41c8-... "We rent a fair bit to film companies because we have such unique unusual stuff," says MacMillan. Some of the stuff in the store is so unique, MacMillan is leery to part with it. He is very fond of a six-foottall wooden fire hydrant pattern from Terminal City Ironworks, which probably dates to the 1910s. It's got a $3,000 price tag. "It's one of those pieces I really don't want to sell," he laughs. "But if it comes in here, my wife insists I have to put a price on it." FURNITURE BRINGS CITY HISTORY HOME: When you buy a piece from Industrial Artifacts, you're buying a piece of Vancouver's industrial history. Most of the patterns used in its furniture come from Progressive Engineering, one of about 200 foundries that once operated in the Lower Mainland. Founded in 1917, Progressive Engineering helped build the machinery that was used in the construction of the Lions Gate Bridge. It also built much of the boat deck machinery for the Liberty ships that were built in Vancouver shipyards during the Second World War. (The Vancouver Liberty ships were also called Park ships, because they were named after local parks.) Cheap imports from India and other countries forced many local foundries to close in the 1950s and 1960s, and only a handful remain. Progressive Engineering was one of the last large machine shops to operate in False Creek. It closed down in 1997. The Progressive Engineering building at 360 West First in Vancouver is being dismantled; the site is owned by Polygon and will become a residential highrise. But many of the huge old fir and cedar beams are being salvaged and recycled, and the city of Vancouver will be saving the landmark Progressive Engineering neon sign, which it hopes to incorporate in the new community that will be developed in southeast False Creek over the next few years. Source: John Mackie © The Vancouver Sun 2004 |
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