The New Old

May 1, 2010
Wendy Goodman

A Windsor Chair in hot-molded plastic.  A glass skull used as an olive-oil container.  A lounger made from the Coney Island boardwalk.  At first, it would seem these things have little in common.  But each represents an attempt to reimagine the past- its colors, its style, its artifacts- towards fresh and exciting ends.  They are all part of the "new old."...
Here we... show some great new objects that tweak history, including [Marcel] Wanders' chair, the Baroque plastic frame, and that Coney Island chaise lounge...
Coney Island is constantly being razed and rebuilt (in fact, a new Luna Park is set to launch on Memorial Day), which makes it an alluring muse for recycling-minded designers. As part of the BKLYN Designs fair, which kicks off May 7 at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo, Red Hook furniture company Uhuru has created the Coney Island line, a collection of six pieces made of materials reclaimed from demolished sections of Coney’s Riegelmann Boardwalk. For the undulating Cyclone Lounger, Uhuru took weatherworn ipe-wood planks and laid them over jagged laser-cut metal to evoke the vertiginous lines of its namesake roller coaster. It’s so familiar you can almost hear the screams.