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Plastic furniture isn't just for the lawn anymore

By Debra D. Bass
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

DAWN MAJORS / ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Lewis and Jill Harold of Chesterfield, Mo., turned to acrylic fixtures, such as this chandelier, when furnishing their new home. The acrylic chandelier weighs 40 percent less than the same design in glass.

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Lana Pepper says she woke up one day with a new sense of style. She walked downstairs and glanced into her dining room filled with European antiques and reproductions — pieces that likely would have been described as "stately," "cultured" and "tasteful" — and thought, "This is boring."

"I don't know what happened, but my taste just changed," Pepper recalled from the seat of a jazzy new acrylic chair vying for attention with her formal mahogany-veneer dining table. "All of a sudden, I thought all of the things I had liked all of my life were old-fashioned."

It's a new day in home decorating. Acrylic, plastic and Lucite creations are redefining high style inside modern, upscale homes. Pepper's transparent dining-room chairs were crafted by a prominent Italian manufacturer and are just one item in a growing industry of what we'd call fine plastic furniture.

Pepper says it was not exactly an overnight decision to ditch the ladderback antique chairs that had long been a staple in her picturesque dining area overlooking a courtyard. She has been witnessing the evolution of plastic furniture since the '70s heyday of shag carpet and mod bubble-shaped offerings. The plastic medium has come a long way since then. Technology now allows designers to create sharp edges and sculptural works that mimic crystal.

	HY-LITE PRODUCTS Acrylic blocks lighten the look of a substantial desk in a home office. The acrylic also weighs less than traditional glass blocks.

But the general perception of plastic is still evolving. Pepper's husband, Ted, admits that the reaction to their new "Ghost Louis" chairs was mixed. Some people walked in, took one look and bluntly stated, "I don't get it." A few thought it might be some kind of private joke because Lana Pepper, who is the managing director of the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, spent months scrounging up hundreds of $4 plastic garden chairs as seating for the event.

She didn't let naysayers sway her. Open-minded visitors instantly noticed that because the chairs are as near to invisible as furniture gets, the room appears larger, less cluttered and brighter. Light flows through the arched-back chairs instead of stopping with a thud onto brown wood.

"Good design is good design is good design," said J. Todd Lannom of Centro Modern Furnishings, where the Peppers became enamored with the Kartell "ghost" chairs designed by Philippe Starck, the Italian company that works with a stable of heavyweight-division furniture designers.

"Kartell is all about producing the most innovative designs possible. They just happen to use plastic as their creative medium," Lannom said.

It's not for everyone.

"There remains a pervasive bias against plastic furniture as being cheap and flimsy," Lannom says.

But Lannom refutes the notion that plastic furniture is for the lawn, not the living room. He tells clients that the Kartell products are probably more durable than anything else in their homes. He says the items have an eye-catching style that is both humorous and sleek. The ghost chairs echo the look of arch-backed Louis XVI armchairs with tapered legs; they sell for about $308.

	Light reflects off curves of the Harolds' acrylic light fixture. The same fixture hangs over the table in the image above.

Many hardy plastic pieces are constructed with the same virtually indestructible polycarbonate that gives safety goggles their strength to withstand all the elements.

"I guess that means the kids can't break it," said Lewis Harold while extolling the virtues of his acrylic sculpture of a baby dolphin balancing on a spray of water. It stands about 4 feet high and resides in his foyer.

Harold, who has an affinity for anything depicting dolphins, first saw the sculpture at a Bob Wyland gallery in Hawaii. "I was just mesmerized by it," he said. But he admits that he groaned with disappointment when he found out that the statue was acrylic.

Harold and his wife, Jill, quickly shook off any qualms and are now among the acrylic converts. The 17,000-square-foot home that they built has clever quirks such as custom-made acrylic chandeliers. The lighting fixture above the granite dining room table hangs by airplane wire 40 feet from the ceiling. The acrylic material reduced the weight by about 40 percent and gave them better control of light refraction.

Ed Dolnick of Dolnick's Contemporary Interiors designed the two chandeliers and said that glass would have produced a tendency to see green hues, instead of a purer spectrum of color.

"Just because the material is man-made doesn't mean that it can't be artistic," Dolnick said. "Even natural materials have to be crafted by someone. You can take a man-made material and do something artistic and creative the same way you can take something natural and make it into a piece a junk."

Even the plastic furniture faithful agree that too much acrylic furniture in a room is comical, no matter how well-designed the pieces are. The trick is to use the right combination of plastics and acrylics, opaque and translucent, to introduce a bit of whimsy.

And here's a cautionary note to those attracted to the translucent quality of a well-designed acrylic chair and table glinting with sensuous colors next to a sunny window. Remember these three words from Lana Pepper as she sat lounging in her dining room dappled with midmorning light. While admiring the sculptural effect of her "Ghost Louis" chairs, a frown registered on her face.

"I see fingerprints," she said to herself.

Lighter, versatile acrylic replaces glass blocks

Some years back, a Playboy humorist predicted that "everything will be plastic, by and by." Although he was referring to plastic surgery and anatomical augmentation, his forecast was just as apt when applied to home building materials.

Plastic laminate, for example, has given us faux wood floors and faux granite countertops. High-density urethane is being widely used to produce architectural elements once carved from wood or sculpted from plaster. Now, another kind of plastic — acrylic — is being used to manufacturer faux glass blocks.

Clear or tinted in trendy hues, they are, like other plastic alternatives, virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. That, of course, raises the question: "Then why not use the real thing?" The chief reason may be weight. At up to 70 percent lighter than glass, acrylic blocks can be used to make operable windows and as inserts in doors. Conventional glass blocks are too heavy for those kinds of applications. Also, while blocks of both materials can be used to build partitions, the weight of glass blocks in substantial quantities can require reinforcement of the floor. That's much less likely with blocks made from acrylic.

Another advantage of acrylic block may be ease of installation. Traditionally, glass block walls have been assembled — by a mason — one block at a time. It can be time-consuming and expensive. Walls made of acrylic blocks, on the other hand, are usually made of prefabricated panels.

Like glass blocks, those made of acrylic come in a variety of sizes. Both are valued for their ability to provide varying degrees of privacy and light transmission at the same time. Though technically transparent, different surface patterns — ribbed, dimpled, fluted, gridded, spiraled, waffled, stippled or wavy — distort the views through the blocks and refract light in different ways. That semi-transparent quality makes both glass and acrylic blocks ideal for a wide range of in-home applications, including:

Interior walls and room dividers. In a home with an open floor plan, a glass or acrylic block partition can define and separate spaces while allowing light from one room to penetrate through to another.

Exterior windows and window walls. From the inside, the blocks can blur an undesirable view of the back of your neighbor's garage while allowing space-expanding daylight to stream in. From the outside, they can provide the privacy you need when your bathroom window faces your neighbor's bedroom window.

Kitchen backsplashes. Just two or three blocks high, sections of glass or acrylic inserted between the countertop and the wall cabinets can enlighten work surfaces and brighten an entire kitchen.

Shower enclosures. The irregular but smooth surface of the blocks sheds water as well as solid glass panels or ceramic tile, but is better at minimizing visible water spots and streaks.

Stairwell railings. Glass or acrylic blocks can provide a surprising and visually compelling alternative to conventional spindles without compromising safety.

Colored blocks in green, blue, peach or rose offer even more decorative possibilities because natural and artificial light gets tinted as it passes through them. Because the intensity of the color varies with the intensity of the light, a room can change moods throughout the course of a day.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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