With stores in Los Angles and Brooklyn, as well as its home base in Cleveland, Ohio, Jason Wein’s stark, minimalist designs are a favorite of Hollywood celebs. In High Point, the Cleveland Art space will feature lighting, shelves and tables built from industrial components and fasteners that Wein culls from defunct factories located throughout New England and America’s rust belt.
“Everything is American-made using recycled and repurposed materials, right down to the fasteners, because I think it’s the right thing to do,” Wein says. “A lot of the machines that we buy from New England are from the 1700s, before electricity, and have three or four lifetimes of workers behind them. Today, with CNC wood router and lasers, one man can operate 100 machines and the jobs have been outsourced overseas. It’s a different age and time, and we’ll never see this history again.”
Beth Lewis too is passionate about giving new life to old pieces, “taking something that someone has discarded as trash and turning it into something that someone else would love to have in their home, simply by visually displaying it in a way that’s pleasing,” she says.
A veteran merchant who opened her first retail shop at the tender age of 19, Lewis’ retail store in Marshville, N.C., about 35 miles East of Charlotte, is a mecca for fans of her blog and singular look, a combination of rustic farmhouse, old architectural pieces and industrial influences brought together by a neutral color palette. The Old Time Marketplace store is housed in a building built in 1910, which movie buffs will recognize as the setting for the general store in the Oscar-winning film, “The Color Purple.”
