Arhaus Furniture founder John Reed traverses the globe to track down eclectic pieces that transform interior spaces. To transform his own office, located within the company’s corporate headquarters and distribution center in Walton Hills, he tracked down an entire barn.

To construct the framework of his 1,200-square-foot office, Reed purchased a small 1800s-era timber-frame barn, which was disassembled piece by piece and reassembled within the confines of a modern structure. The characteristic rough-hewn beams are fastened together with little more than wooden pegs, and the barn’s original wide-plank flooring stretches from wall to wall.

The barn/office is a repository of Reed’s souvenirs — amassed from decades of international travel — and brims with conversation pieces. Used as a conference table, a 10-foot slab of solid wood imported from the Philippines bears the brand of an antique pressing iron. A Himalayan river rock, the size of a baby pig, has been eroded by rushing water to a perfectly symmetrical form. Distinctive hats from various countries adorn the walls while a multihued Indonesian armoire brightens up a dark corner.

“Arhaus furniture is intended to be warm, livable and useable,” Reed said. “This office is an extension of that philosophy — a place where you can sit back and think. I enjoy coming back to my barn when I’ve been away.”

Trattner is a free-lance writer in Cleveland Heights.

Source

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:59 am and is filed under Furniture, Home Furniture. Tags: Antique, Cleveland, Distribution Center, Furniture, Indonesia, Philippines, Small, Table, the Company, XML, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.