Design New England - May/June 2015

de sign the magazine of splendid homes and gardens • may/june 2015

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FINDING TRANQUILITY FROM CAPE COD TO MAINE

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Reclamations

by courtney goodrich

BUOYED BY ART attention. Vlock’s artistic treatment, however, gives them a visual lightness, and when illuminated by the glow of a fire, they become magical.

“It affects the space it inhabits,” says Vlock. “There’s a mood it evokes.” The original (above) was delivered to Vlock’s brother as a gift without notice or authorization. Her family enjoys the second fireball, now positioned prominently in the garden (right).

The pieces are made to order, so any imagery or idea could influence the design.

Dave Wilkerson, an ornamental-metal worker whose shop, Wilkerson Iron, is in Essex, Connecticut, approximates the design to the curve of a ball’s ¼-inch-thick steel plate surface and cuts it out. He uses a plasma cutter, which, unlike a laser cutter,

EDWINA STEVENSON

One day, Sandra Vlock’s teenage son came home to find two enormous World War I-era mooring balls, the kind used to secure large ships, rusting away in the backyard. His mother, an architect and president of Arbonies King Vlock of Branford, Connecticut, had ordered them online on a whim.

They sat there, beautiful but untouched, for a couple of years. Then Vlock had an idea.

Inspired by an artist’s work she had seen on a trip to the British Virgin Islands, Vlock sketched a 15-foot-long “paper doll cutout” depicting a marine life scene. She had the image cut out of the metal surface of one of the hollow balls to create a sculptural work of art that also functions as a vessel for awesome outdoor campfires.

Measuring 5 feet in diameter and weighing 300 pounds, the fireballs command

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produces a rough edge for the sketch-like quality Vlock prefers. “As an architect, I tend to have to be more precise,” she says. “This was really more of an expression of me as an artist.”

And it is low tech. Kindling and logs can be tossed through a side door to feed the fire.

“It’s a participatory sport,” says Vlock, adding it’s important that “it’s more than just the object. It’s a shared experience.”

For less of a “roughing it” experience, Vlock says, the fireball can be set up to work with propane instead of wood. Price available upon request. Arbonies King Vlock, 199 South Montowese Street, Branford, CT; akvpc.com.

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For 30 years, Cliff Hakim was a career consultant and executive coach who advised people through company transitions. Meanwhile, he says, “I felt my own transition coming on.” In 2013, he started Inspired Stones, a reclaimed art and furniture business he runs out of a workshop in West Concord, Massachusetts.

Hakim ventures into attics and cellars, old farms, and shut-down quarries to find interesting pieces of timeworn wood, iron, stone, and glass that he re-purposes into something new: a huge iron machine washer from a factory tops a side table (above), an old water grate tops another, and a 150-pound saw blade disk sits on a reclaimed granite pedestal. He is selective about materials and alters the found pieces only minimally so the finished products evoke the age and history that make them distinctive.

Though he has his own workshop, Hakim “borrows people’s talents” when needed, such as when a boulder has to be sliced down the middle.

Fortunately, West Concord is teeming with accommodating artisans equipped with expensive equipment, so he doesn’t have to go far. “You can’t