Creating A custom Console Using Custom Cabinet Pulls

Those familiar with our furniture collections will know that they provided a practical foundation as well as a design aesthetic for the cabinet pulls that followed. The early pieces were textural or floral in theme and were created for the Ascot and Aspen styles respectively.
While we nostalgically remember our furniture days it is very gratifying to see how others are continuing to use our work in their furniture designs. Carol Salb and Stacy Welch at Reddington Designs have kindly shared with me photographs of their recently completed and stunning console. The console was designed as the center piece for the room shown below and stainless steel pulls were specified to compliment the legs and frame of the piece.

Photo Courtesy of Reddington Design

To accentuate the lace design Carol and Stacy suggested we polish the center section but satin brush the ends thereby making a more natural transition to the brushed legs and frame.
The console was made from cerused rift oak and was fabricated by Ayr Cabinets . Cerusing is a technique used to fill in open grained wood with a white compound and when used with dark stained oak the result can be dramatic.
The console is beautifully flanked by Aurora V11 a Tom Corbin sculpture cast in bronze and finished in a green brown patina. Corbin portrays the Roman goddess of dawn as a young girl caught in motion as she release a bird into the sky. The sculptures contemporary style works well with the modern console and together they make a wonderful interior design statement.

Aurora V11 by Tom Corbin, Console by Carol Salb and Stacy Welch, photo courtesy Reddington Designs

Nature an aid to designing long door handles

Nature an aid to designing long door handles

Having the luxury of enjoying a solitary walk in the Hollywood Hills with 50 minutes free from the demands of technology one’s mind is able to consume the smaller details that otherwise would go unnoticed. I do mean smaller details as without a scale reference it can be impossible to judge the size of a flower from a photograph, so would you be surprised that the buds of the flowers shown below are less than .25”? While Martin Pierce tries to be true to nature when it comes to realism and to the scale of his lizard and butterfly hardware, he often employs considerable latitude when designing plant door handles or cabinet knobs as can be seen in the larger than life daisy flower knob.

We are presently developing a series of long door handles for both hospitality and residential projects and to create functional pulls that are easy to grip and meet ADA standards we are using considerable artistic license. Working with a narrow 1.5” diameter our creative canvas is extremely limited, so we are looking to nature for ideas. As the door pulls will be 60” in length the initial designs have been for vertical and elongated filigree but by segmenting the pull into decorative and non-decorative areas we are able to create vertical bands of decoration and these will be more geometric and abstract.

The elongated floral designs are being sketched and will be reviewed soon before a final selection is made.

Modern cabinet pulls and nickel plating

Nickel is a hard corrosion resistant metal and it is one of the components in 316 stainless steel that we use in many of our door handle and cabinet pull castings. Nickel is also used to plate metal and a thin layer is deposited onto the surface through the electro-plating process. The nickel layer can be used to protect the base metal from corrosion and wear but it can also be used to create a decorative finish. We offer nickel plating as a custom finish and recently plated our Hedgerow branch pulls over a bronze base to achieve a more rustic look.

Hedgerow Branch Pull Center Standard Size

In an earlier post we detailed how we modified the Hedgerow branch pull to accommodate a bank of kitchen cabinets where space was tight and traffic was high. As there were only a handful of pieces it would not have been cost effective to make a new pattern and mold so we modified each of the 9 cabinet pulls when they were still in the wax stage by sculpting each piece. The two wax mounting posts were cut and repositioned and the ends of the tree canopy were cut and re-sculpted making each pull shorter and self-returning.

Mounting posts were re-positioned and ends shortened in the wax stage

Once cast, the pulls were buffed, cleaned and plated. Nickel plating is versatile and can be used over polished or matt surfaces and can be finished in a range of light to dark patinas. In this instance we were matching the new pieces to ones that were installed 18 months ago but as we had a sample Boyles Snyder were able to make a perfect match.