Rejuvenation Inc. Warehouse - a well preserved 1930's warehouse
A couple of weeks ago, fellow blogger Atomic Indy featured his amazing hardware purchase from Rejuvenation for his MCM restoration project. It got me thinking how fortunate us Pacific Northwesterners are to have a showroom right down the street. Then it made me think how extra special us Portlanders are for having their main distribution warehouse also right down the street. So, after I let my brain rest from all of that thinking, I e-mailed their lovely Marketing Specialist, Nicole, to see if I could get a behind the scenes peek of how they make all of their fabulous hardware and lighting fixture magic, and she agreed (without too much arm twisting) to take me on a warehouse tour…..with their MCM fixture designer Tim (his actual job title is Industrial Designer)! In addition to the tour getting scheduled, Nicole invited me to one of their lecture events appropriately titled, “Fixture Fascination: The Art of Lighting Reproduction – American lighting styles 1870-1970”. If you ever have an opportunity to attend any of the Rejuvenation events, it is well worth your time. They are highly educational, you get to meet other enthusiasts, and they have great food and wine.
I arrived on Thursday morning at the Rejuvenation warehouse armed with Saint Cupcakes (bribery tools) and my Nikon, extremely excited to get a behind the scenes peek at this amazing companies design to development process. The current warehouse is Rejuvenations 5th location since they started their business in 1977. It is located in a beautiful 1932 building that, in proper Rejuvenation fashion, has been well preserved with sustainable features. To get to the offices, I climbed the spiral staircase encased on one side by floor-to-ceiling glass block windows. At the top of the stairs I was greeted by the friendly receptionist and Nicole peeked her head out of her office, greeted me and led me to the design office to meet Tim. After a round of introductions, Tim described to me how the creative process happens for the design team. A lot of the inspiration for fixtures comes from existing vintage salvage pieces, research (internet, vintage catalogs), client suggestions, or old homes that contain original fixtures. Next, we stepped out into the 87,000 square foot warehouse that had tons of natural light pouring in from huge windows located close to the ceiling. We stopped in to a section of the warehouse where the prototypes for the new designs are created. This is where I got a sneak peek of one of the versions of a brand new mid century light fixture coming out in a couple of weeks. I was able to observe, and am amazed, at how hands on each part of the fixture creation process is. All of the parts are shipped to them separately, the finishes are carefully produced, some are sandblasted, some are exposed to different levels of oxidation to get the right color, some get buffed. There are examples of all of the different finishes hanging on the wall for each piece to be checked to ensure they are all the same color and texture so that all of your fixtures match. Once the finishes are just right, the fixtures are assembled, wired, checked to make sure they will work correctly, then carefully packed into boxes. After watching this assembly process, I was then escorted by my wonderful hosts to a slightly smaller warehouse room where they house all of the vintage salvage fixtures. There were a handful of employees restoring, preserving each piece by hand. In this section of the warehouse, there are storage shelves that are packed full of vintage lighting globes, and tons of very interesting vintage pieces. I could have spent a lot of time in that room drooling over all of the fixtures. Then, as we wrapped up the tour we stopped by the loading dock where there was pallet upon pallet of boxed up fixtures waiting to go to their clients homes.
stairs to the Rejuvenation offices - (if I worked here, I would request that my desk be located right here)
inside the warehouse - bright with natural light
shiny MCM fixtures waiting to be assembled
The history of Rejuvenation Inc. is fascinating. The original 900 sq.ft. store and concept was spawned out of the owners love of historic preservation and public demand for vintage fixtures. Historical preservation is a concept that Americans are starting to identify as important from both a historic and sustainable standpoint. Rejuvenation has been putting this concept into practice for over 32 years along with their encouragement to others to “restore” rather than “re-do”.
Rejuvenation has a 38,000 sq. ft. showroom in Portland, Oregon located at 1100 SE Grand and a 6,000 sq.ft. Seattle showroom located at 2910 First Avenue S.
Additional resources:
Arcalus Period Design is located inside of the Portland showroom. The owner, Bo Sullivan, is a historian and an independent design consultant. Bo has compiled and manages for Rejuvenation Inc., an exhaustive library of reference materials for homes from most time periods so that you can make appropriate restoration choices.
More Posts on Rejuvenation:
