(26 Dec 2013) LEADIN
Pieces of furniture made from recycled vintage airplane parts are selling for thousands of dollars in Los Angeles.
Items include a mile high bed made from the tail fin of a DC-9 aircraft, office dividers made of afuselage parts and sofas built from the pontoons of water aircraft.
STORYLINE
Motoart, based in Los Angeles, near LAX airport came up with the idea to create these unique pieces and business is booming.
A 20 thousand square foot facility in El Segundo, California houses the studio, where A-list clients and corporations can't get enough of the original handmade furniture constructed from plane parts that were ready for the scarp yard.
Co-owner, Donovan Fell III began creating the sculptures from B-17 propellers and other pieces, but it wasn't until 2001 that he joined forces with sales and marketing expert, Dave Hall to create the company.
Today, they call their furniture quality artwork.
Hall says: "We started Motoart in 2001 and we designed this to actually preserve aviation history and make something up into functional art. We noticed a lot of these aircraft were being demolished and we wanted to make it into something fun and bring it to market. It's something that started as a hobby that quickly spun out of control and here we are 13 years later and we really created something special."
Fell III says: "This looks a lot like my room when I was 10 years old except all the airplanes then were model airplanes. Now most everything in here is real and we take vintage aircraft and make furniture out of it and occasionally an art sculpture or two."
Clients include large corporations such as General Electric and Lockeed Martin. Their work is in demand for office entrances and showrooms, as well as for celebrity clients and Middle Eastern VIP's. Creations include tables, bars, chairs and desks, bookcases and sofas.
Large conference tables for offices are made of airplane wings. Office reception desks are made of the cowling, which is the part that wraps the jet engine on a commercial plane.
There are more than 120 Motoart limited edition designs to date.
Many of the creations require from 100 up to 500 hours to cut, ground, buff and polish.
The company makes three to four million a year and employs 18 to 20 people headed by Donovan as the lead designer.
Fell III says: "We have a wide selection of used aviation parts here. Most everything is made of aluminium. It needs to be light so it can fly. Most of what you see is ailerons (moveable flaps of the wing), tail pieces, rudders, flat pieces that are good for making desks and conference tables. You will also see a lot of propellers here."
Hall says one disadvantage today is getting their hands on limited edition parts for of many of their creations:
"We really seek out all the old vintage parts, the World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam War and they are getting more and more difficult to find because one, Homeland Security now restricts us from getting any type of military parts, so what we have has been grandfathered, in but we are getting fewer and fewer of these left in our inventory. What we do have access to is commercial aircraft, the 737's, the 727's, the 747's. Though they are readily available they are not so easy to take down off the aircraft, so there is a rule of thumb that even before we start a part we are into it for thousands of dollars just getting it off the aircraft and back here to our studio."
Steve Oiiveria, a dentist based in Manhattan Beach, California has DC 3 engineer chairs as waiting room chairs, a desk made of a wing and many sculptures at his practice.
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