If every photo tells a story, then every timber holds a history too. It describes why recovered furnishings is so popular with consumers at Fitzroy timber-furniture shop Engrain. “Recovered lumber has the tendency to have that comfy sensation where you can simply take a seat at a table and slide a bowl of chips across it,” discusses Engrain designer and co-owner Beth Watts. “It’s not extremely valuable looking and not extremely polished.”
Beth and life and business partner Chris Barned specialise in making custom lumber furnishings from recovered glue laminated timber products. A few of the pieces are made from decommissioned wine barrels and are offered under The Vino Furnishings Business brand name. Correcting the barrels’ bent lumber staves was a procedure that took Chris 5 months to best, so Beth states it’s a carefully safeguarded trick.
“Chris invested a great deal of time exercising our procedures and ways to do it, and establishing our workshop to do it,” she states. Engrain sources its lumber from 5 partner wineries around Australia, consisting of Seppeltsfield, in the Barossa Valley, and d’Arenberg, in McLaren Vale. The resourceful business also uses recycled wood from the old Amcor site in Alphington, and the previous RAAF base in Tottenham.
Beth states the furnishing pieces are constructed to last, and the recovered lumber narrates and makes individuals feel comfortable. “It’s extremely genuine and it’s extremely resilient,” she states. “I believe individuals like the concept that something has a history; that there’s a provenance to it. It’s something the family feels great around. The kind of furnishings we craft is something they’re going to have for half of their life. “More than likely, they’re (just) going to change it if they downsize their home or when they end up having a family.”
In addition to including barrel wood and recycled engineered timber frames, Engrain’s tables, buffets, home entertainment systems, chairs, stools and bookcases use American oak and Tasmanian oak – all authorized by the Forest Stewardship Council. Beth creates the furnishings, which is then made by Chris and his group of artisans at the business’s Dandenong workshop.
Striking a balance between design and performance is always the objective, she states. “Our company believe furnishings has to be delighted in; it does not have to be covered, it has to be lived on,” Beth states. “Everyone desires gorgeous things in their house, but they need to be practical.”
The worldwide wine barrel market has anticipated to see substantial development as a need of wine is increasing internationally over the forecasted period. Use of oak wine barrels for aging the wine makes it abundant in taste and quality which is leading aspect drives for the development of the worldwide wine barrel market. The regulated oxidation occurs throughout the aging in the barrel and leads to reduced astringency and increased colour and stability of wine. This is ideal over using other barrels comprised of plastic and metals, meaning another source of increase to the international wine barrel market in regards to profits and volume.
