When you are low on cash, have just moved to a new city and need to furnish your digs, your options usually consist of scoring thrift store finds and great deals on secondhand pieces from online classified ads. Well, what happens you can’t even afford that?
When Myriah Scruggs and Nadia Yaron got to New York City, they found themselves in this very situation. That’s when they decided to repurpose castoff furniture rescued from the street curb.
The furniture pieces they deconstructed and reconstructed from other people’s trash became rustic-yet-modern works of art–and the makings of a home décor business specializing in custom furniture and textiles called Nightwood. Making Dumpster diving chicer than ever, Scruggs and Yaron show how necessity breeds design innovation through “reincarnated furniture” made from the bones of abandoned pieces that get a facelift with new upholstery of organic, vintage and sustainable fabrics. The duo also produces textiles, including pillows, linens and rugs constructed of recycled materials.
The Hitchcock Coffee Table is a poetic composition of oak, purpleheart, ipe, mahogany, pine, poplar and birch plywood. It’s serious and sturdy with a patchwork-y yet refined style.
Both delicate and edgy, the Market Chair was once an antique. Now, it’s been revamped, repurposed and reupholstered to remain stylish in modern times with flannel denim, organic canvas and recycled ticking.
The Union Love Seat is a reconfiguration of oak, maple, walnut woods, denim and recycled canvas with paint stains to form unique seating. Its folksy accent pillow is made from hand-stitched burlap inspired by Native American design.
The various pieces of pine, poplar, oak and plywood come together to form the Capetown Credenza. It not only creates rhythm in the piece’s design, it proves that otherwise useless furniture can be reborn into something entirely new and artful.