-
A New Upholstery Association Wants to Unite and Rebuild the U.S. Industry
The American upholstery industry recently issued itself a call to action: Now is the time to unite and rebuild, or else… Part SOS, part call to arms, a new generation sought to preserve an industry that was left to perish when vocational upholstery programs closed their doors decades ago. Enter the National Upholstery Association (NUA). Founded by eight professional women upholsterers from seven states, it launched in July 2019 with a mission of “working together to support and advance the field of professional upholstery.” The timing may be critical. Currently, seasoned upholsterers are in short supply. Shops can’t afford the time and resources necessary to provide intensive training. And newcomers…
-
Carrot as Compost; Couch as Catalyst
Food waste rescue is the art of saving food from the landfill for use and redistribution. This approach has spurred innovative catering companies, created shelf stable product lines, and provided culinary education and leadership training for people with barriers to employment. New industry segments all catalyzed by food waste—amazing. This work is creative, and logistically complicated, but so is climate change and food insecurity. Opting out is not an option. Can we rescue furniture waste with a similar model? Can we not salvage some materials and add value to others in the name of sustained waste prevention? Can we help create markets through legislation and education? Can we create jobs…
-
Secondhand Supply Convoy
Silly drawers sitting at a crosswalk. I can think of funny narratives about bad directions or objects on an exciting escapade but in my heart I think the truth is much more sobering. Oakland has over 4,000 homeless people on its streets, a surge of 47% in just two years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. I believe these drawers are a tiny glimpse into a supply convoy of materials used to construct repurposed up-cycled shelters. Sounds Pinterest worthy, doesn’t it? Repurposed. Up-cycled materials. Tiny homes. But instead, it describes a devastating reality of homeless encampments. People are constructing temporary homes out of what is plentiful in their surrounding environment…
-
American Manufacturing in a Backyard
In the fall of 2015, I was hired to strip furniture and put the easy pieces back together again for a small shop that sold upcycled goods in North Oakland. I worked outside, on the back patio of a woman’s house. I remember it being sunny and warm, being fit as hell (the 8 mile bike ride helped), and being crazy nostalgic for a different era of American manufacturing. Serendipitously, the book, “Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local – and Helped Save an American Town,” was released just a few months earlier. It was a mesmerizing story that, growing up on the west coast, had never…
-
Women are Saving the Trade
In my experience and research, women are often not made to feel welcome in the repair trades. Despite women making up the majority of my reupholstery class, my teacher was adamant that we couldn’t be professional upholsterers. I laughed out loud the time he called us all over to see another student’s completed project. She was the most experienced in our cohort. In front of everyone he praised her beautiful work, and then said, now you can run a shop and hire a man to do the upholstery. Ha! What? She laughed it off but the comment cast doubt in my mind. Hand-tying springs on couches was a massive undertaking,…
-
Imagining Benefits that Benefited the Long Term
How much does language influence our thoughts? I love this example. A hospital connotes care, even when applied to furniture. This combination of words provides a gentle, refreshing reminder that furniture should not be disposable. Well made frames are built to have many lives. Talented reupholsterers are trained to bring each owner’s specific aesthetic to life. This loving maintenance, also known as reupholstery, powers multigenerational reuse, is kinder to the planet, supports skilled labor, and enriches the local community. Beyond language, what about payment? A hospital is also synonymous with insurance. Companies’ benefit packages offer pet insurance, and student loan payback perks, why not material maintenance insurance? It aligns our…
-
Whisking our Worries Away with our Trash
We’re so conditioned. This treatment of resources is encouraged by our profit seeking systems. It’s become normalized behavior to see precious resources packaged into goods, full of embodied energy, carbon, and labor, piled up on the street and not flinch. People may walk by and sniff it out to see if anything is worth saving, but that’s an imperfect solution and things degrade quickly when they’re left on the street, even when set out in perfect condition. This system says materials are more valuable as garbage than keeping them in and moving them through our local economy. Who benefits from this practice? In whose interest is it for us to…
