INSPIRATION: The edgy, funky side of the city juxtaposed with soft, primitive objects found in the country. “Fusion between the industrial city and found objects from the country is sort of our thing,” says Philip Sassano, artist, decorator and owner of Refined Rustic Studio & Gallery, an art and interiors gallery with locations in Chicago and Lake Geneva, Wis. “We love to smash them together into a single new piece.”
INTERPRETATION: Refined Rustic Studio & Gallery’s New Element Found Object Lighting collection, introduced last winter. This unique collection of lighting fixtures (pendants, chandeliers and floor and table lamps) features rustic odds and ends Sassano has collected during his years pillaging the barns, farms and antiques malls of Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin — and sometimes as far as Florida.
Old metal tricycle wheels, antique wooden children’s blocks, tiny glass medicinal bottles and other quirky bits end up perched inside a wire globe or dangling from a basket as a reinvented pendant. Sassano and his creative team catalog their country treasures in a warehouse in Harvard, Ill., until they are able to build them into something new. “I stow away all my weird finds, waiting for an idea to crystallize,” Sassano says.
BRING IT HOME: Prices range from $575 to $1,200, depending on size of lighting fixture and intricacy and rarity of components. Various fixtures available now at 3924 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-685-4670; beginning Friday at the new Lake Geneva gallery, 231 Cook St., Lake Geneva, Wis., 262-249-0940; beginning April 24 at the new Andersonville shop Brimfield, 5219 N. Clark St., 312-593-6415; and online at refinedrustic.com.
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