Jun 11, 2009

Save That Driftwood for ThemBy Penelope GreenNYTimes.com

“Driftwood is the new Costa Rican mahogany” is Mark Welsh’s new sound bite.

As a copywriter and brand consultant for companies like West Elm and Cole-Haan, Mr. Welsh (in foreground at right) is a seasoned sloganeer. And this one he built to go with his new business, Carter and Cunningham, a joint venture with his partner, James Salaiz (shown standing behind him), named after their mothers’ families. The two are handmaking mirrors, sculptures and furnishings from salvaged materials (or “plundered trash,” as Mr. Welsh calls it), driftwood and Mr. Salaiz’s ceramics pieces.

It all started last summer, which the two spent in a Shelter Island teardown that Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler had just bought and lent to them before its date with the bulldozer. They called the house Feral Hall and furnished it with booty found in the furniture section of the Shelter Island dump, which Mr. Welsh refers to as “the gift shop.” They also found chair spindles, wooden buoys, weather vanes and assorted pieces of metal and old timber there, which they have since been transforming into mirrors and sculptures.

“Mark and James are creative scavengers,” said Mr. Doonan, who bought a driftwood mirror based on a florid 17th-century design. “Everything is grist to their mill. The way they repurpose and combine objects is totally 2009.”

Mr. Welsh said he loved making classic pieces like Venetian mirrors, rendered in “things with zero provenance” like driftwood. The best material, he said, can be found on the beaches of Shelter Island, Provincetown and even the East River.

“The hand of man is where we see culture,” he said sonorously, another sound bite, which made him laugh.

The driftwood mirror at right ($2,400) has spindles from the “gift shop” that Mr. Welsh hand-silvered, a whale tile made by Mr. Salaiz and pieces from a cabinet they had been using as storage until they ran out of room in their studio and broke it down. The hand-thrown bottles on the shelf below are Mr. Salaiz’s ($150 to $400).

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