A mirror made from a mold taken from an old window sits atop an original floral painting.

Chris Hart paints an accent on a piece in her studio in Grants Pass, Ore. She finds pieces at estate sales and flea markets, and adds architectural accents from old houses to create original art.

Interior paneling from an old beach house becomes a picture frame once Hart works her magic.

Date published: 4/30/2006

By JEFF BARNARD

AP STAFF WRITER

GRANTS PASS, Ore.--Chris Hart's studio is stacked floor to ceiling with not-quite antiques, old doors and windows, cast-off bird cages and pieces of old houses that she saved from the landfill.

She cuts them up, mixes them together and creates furniture that is also art--works she hopes will someday become heirlooms that the not-quite antiques could never be.

"People ask what I do for a living," said Hart, dressed in jeans and an artisan's long apron, leaning against her workbench, beneath which her Doberman, Rita, chewed on a toy tiger.

"I really don't know. I like to say I'm a furniture designer and my pieces are new construction made from components I've taken from other pieces--molding from a house in Jacksonville, the legs off of an old bed, that kind of thing."

The most interesting pieces she found were invariably the antiques. "But they were being thrown away because they couldn't be made good enough to be sold as an antique. So I started cannibalizing those pieces in my new construction. I found the final product was much more interesting than if I built a new piece of furniture from scratch.

"Plus, it's harder to find solid wood any more. You don't find that kind of molding, those kinds of legs, those kinds of carved pieces."

Hart makes Trumeau mirrors, kitchen islands, cupboards, hallway benches, picture frames, decorative panels, plaster saints and chandeliers. They all carry the glow of age and use, a sense of country living and an originality born of mixed origins. They're sold in a few shops in the Pacific Northwest and through her Web site, chrishartstudio.com.

Katrina McDermott spotted Hart's work about nine years ago while visiting her grandparents in Grants Pass and now sells it at her store, Embellish, on Bainbridge Island outside Seattle.

"I think it's appealing to people who want that imperfect, charming piece of furniture that you can't go to Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel and find," said McDermott.

She has seen others try to do what Hart does, without her results. "Because she's an artist, she can make it look like it's intentional instead of just a bunch of disparate items or things put together," McDermott said.

Date published: 4/30/2006