ADVERTISING & BRANDING AUGUST 13, 2014

How Glass With Chicken Wire Became Trendy The story behind a pricey light's former life

By Robert Klara

If you’ve spent any time trying to spruce up your home lately, you might have noticed something interest-ing. The practice of repurposing old industrial products has become a full-on part of modern domestic life.

In the early 20th century, wired glass could be found in o�ce buildings everywhere. In this 1905 ad, Mississippi Wire Glass promoted that its products were used in New York’s prestigious Trinity Building. In fact, they still are.

HGTV.com’s 12 Clever Uses for Old Furniture features tips like using a mattress spring box as a bulletin board. Last year, Dwell magazine carried a story about Austria’s Das Park Hotel where the rooms are made out of old concrete sewer pipes. (“These pipes are ready for occupants,” enthused the editors.) Restoration Hardware has created an entire segment devoted to repurposing industrial objects from ages past, like the bar created from a 265-pound cast-iron German lightbulb testing machine from the ’20s.

Fans of repurposing take it as an article of faith that the items being reused must have had some past, utilitarian life. But most of the time, we don’t actual-ly get to experience what those lives looked like—unless, of course, we look through the window of advertising. The two ads here demon-strate how wired glass—an ordinary product of the

Chances are, you remember this kind of glass from the doors of your high school gymnasium. Sam Spade’s o�ce door in The Maltese Falcon had it, too. A century ago, wire glass (made from laying chicken wire between two ribbons of semi-molten glass and then pressing them together) served the dual purpose of meeting �re code and, since it came in a variety of textures, providing privacy. This 1905 ad for the Missis-sippi Wire Glass Co. boasted that the Trinity Building, at the time a new o�ce tower in New York, used its signature product.

So how did a workaday commodity from our industrial heyday become the de�ning element of The Lucien, the $1,270 �xture shown in this 2014 ad for Urban Electric Co.? “The inspiration for the use of the wire glass came from old industrial skylights and gymnasium doors,” designer Michael Amato told us. No doubt it did—but the law helped, too.

Between 2003 and 2006, the International Building Code gradually phased out wired glass as �re-safety compliant. Old buildings had for years already been replacing wire glass, and with so many giving it the heave-ho, it got instant antique status.

“They’re going for that traditional, nostalgic look,” ventured Stuart Leslie, president of brand design �rm 4sight, who added that many young designers have an a�nity for incorporating found or recovered objects (genuine or reproduction) in contemporary home and o�ce accessories. “It looks like it had a use for something else, and they cut it up for a light. It’s a found object thing going on. I can see the appeal of a cool, retro �xture like this.”

‘It looks like it had a use for something else, and they cut it up for a light. It’s a found object thing.” Stuart Leslie, founder and president, 4sight

1. This �nish is “antique brass,” evoking a time before plastic took over. 2. Urban Electric is a 10-year-old company whose 300 �xtures embody what it calls “the very best of past and future.” Fortunately for them, there’s a lot of past to borrow from. 3. Even though this wired glass isn’t used as a window anymore, Leslie points out that safety glass is still a wise choice for an object that’ll hang over people’s heads. “The use for the glass,” he said, “has come around full circle.”