|
The first off-line peek at the forces and faces behind the new online collective and home-design shop Hinge pleased the crowd at the Chicago Antique Market over Memorial Day weekend. Hinge founder Angela Stone has brought together a group of furniture and accessory designers, vintage dealers, and artists committed to using raw and reclaimed materials. The result? A mix of unadorned farmhouse antiques, sleek vintage pieces, and sustainable custom furniture—each with an artful edge and a whole lotta soul. Think old materials, new forms. She coined (and quickly trademarked) the Hinge aesthetic as “Farmhouse Modern.” Furniture designers Bladon Conner and Aaron Pahmier showed off their handiwork, including one-of-a-kind tables topped with 100-year-old reclaimed maple floorboards and a lovely black-lacquered vintage dresser with Burberry-plaid-lined drawers. Elizabeth Siegan’s hand-drawn screen-printed linen pillows dotted the space along with photographer Emily Johnston Anderson’s poetic snaps. Stone grew up in coastal Southern Maine, where her dad was a furniture builder and mom an interior designer. “I am the polar opposite of what I grew up with,” she says of her folks’ far more formal style. When she moved to Chicago, she dabbled in design work with decorator Laura Soskin. “We were always looking for the perfect find for a client’s home and I thought, ‘Why does it have to be so hard?’” After a nearly sold-out booth at the end of Sunday’s show, we’d say she’s on to something. Sign up for Hinge’s newsletter, to get info on studio open houses, furniture parties, and future Chicago Antique Market appearances.
—Barri Leiner Grant
Read more