Recycle and Reclaim / Shopping Green

By Rita Cook

With two product lines of reclaimed and recycled wood tables, Dallas-resident artist Sarah Reiss says her most popular line is called the Chevron series, which are geometric tables that she constructs from a combination of woods salvaged from demolished gymnasiums, bowling alleys, warehouses and barns.
“I've created dining tables, desks, round tables and conference tables, and each one is different and awesome in its own way,” she begins.

Of her second line of tables called the Whitworth Series those are natural-edge dining and conference tables that are made from trees that have recently been destroyed in the drought.   “The trick is locating large, consecutively milled slabs so that each side of the table is [a] perfect mirror image of the other.” (Photo Sarah Reiss)

For the holidays, Reiss has been hard at work in her home studio and she recently completed an 11-foot spalted maple slab table with a welded steel trestle base for a Dallas family's lake house.

Another family commissioned a circular Chevron table in greens and blues to fit into their remodeled kitchen in time for Christmas visitors and she also just wrapped up a series of organically-shaped benches that she says makes for great extra seating when guests arrive.

“Because each piece is designed based on its own natural characteristics, no two tables are alike either,” Reiss explains. “I have wonderful friends in the salvage business who give me the heads-up when interesting pieces of wood come in and I have wonderful friend with a sawmill who knows what my customers like and give me first dibs on any trees he finds that are dead.”
Reiss can also be found welding her own steel bases too, a part of the table-making process she says she really enjoys since it allows her to take creative chances.

Spending almost two decades as a magazine writer and editor before realizing that she enjoyed making things much more than writing things, she also found she had a real kinship for recycling.  Within a month of making her first table she had more orders than she could handle from customers all over the country so it was at that time that R & R Designworks was born.

                   
                    Chevron Table (Photo Sarah Reiss)

In addition to orders from families around Texas, Reiss has also been commissioned to make reclaimed wood counters for a motorcycle shop in California, a 14-foot community table for a new restaurant in Florida and conference tables for businesses with an eye toward being green.
“I've been fortunate enough to meet some crazy-talented artists throughout my life,” she says of her recycled woodworking fetish. “One of those people was Ru Amagasu, grandson of the late George Nakashima. I purchased my first piece of natural-edge wood from him at his barn in New Jersey and made my first natural edge table.”

                     
                      Whitworth Bench (Photo Sarah Reiss)

The Chevron design evolved out of a collaboration with one of her customers from Tulsa who like the reclaimed wood walls she made before her table making began.   She says by applying the same principles to a tabletop, the first iteration of the Chevron table was born.

“It evolves with every piece I make, which keeps the process interesting and I've always felt like items that already have some miles on them are way more interesting than new ones,” Reiss concludes.  “The same goes for pieces of wood. I love finding pieces of wood with stripes of color that come from having been a part of something else, like a logo or name. Juxtaposing all of the randomness produces a new kind of energy.”

The cost of Reiss’ table begin at $2,000 for the Chevron tables and $2,500 for the Whitworth slab tables, but she says price is based on size, availability of materials, base style and intricacy of design.

Her tables are available through her website at www.RandRDesignworks.com or through her ETSY store at www.etsy.com/shop/RandRDesignworks and are also sold at various boutiques in the Dallas area.


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Rita Cook is an award winning journalist who writes or has written for the Dallas Morning News, Focus Daily News, Waxahachie Daily Light, Dreamscapes Travel Magazine, Porthole, Core Media, Fort Worth Star Telegram and many other publications in Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago.  With five books published, her latest release is “A Brief History of Fort Worth” published by History Press.  You can contact her at rcook13@earthlink.net