The feet-on-the-ground reality of today's Vancouver is that apartments are shrinking to the size of rich people's walk-in closets. Marcia Levar cites 500 to 600 square feet as not uncommon, which is why the pieces she and mother Phyllis stock in their store must pass two strict rules before they make it through the door of Sister Kate's Furniture & Things (4435 East Hastings Street, Burnaby). First, they must take up as little floor space as possible. And, because storage is a perennial problem, they must offer that too. Levar points out an item that's made the cut: a piano bench with a lift-up lid that, recast as a coffee table, can now hold a TV remote instead of Mozart ($55).
Close by are five tall bar stools, their bronze-coloured vinyl in pristine condition, their bases made of black wrought iron, their backs shaped like angular shields, and their offbeat style typical of the quirky finds here. Both generations are self-admitted packrats and passionate collectors, Levar says, and the store, open a year and named after an aunt who died tragically young, is the natural outgrowth.
Being strapped for floor space doesn't necessarily mean you're restricted with your walls, she says, indicating a display of bold geometric wooden shapes that are moulds from old Vancouver foundries. "A salvage man who was dismantling them contacted us," Levar says, explaining that the one-of-a-kind pieces formerly lived around False Creek or Gastown, date back as far as the early 1900s, and are all made of old-growth timber.
In their original role, these wooden shapes were pressed into sand to form a mould for metal, she explains. Two circular pieces, for instance, would be clamped together to pour a chain gear. Now, fitted with mirrors, the individual wooden rounds sell briskly ($200 gets you one around 90 centimetres wide), especially as wedding gifts "that are not on the registry at The Bay". Another circle, painted red, measuring over a metre, and recessed, cries out for a glass top and a base to transform it into a coffee table ($350). A large container, its different woods sanded and varnished to show their varied colours ($65), would make an impressive fruit bowl, but not all pieces have an obvious use. "It serves no other purpose than being decorative," Levar says of a small two-part object shaped like a primitive spaceship ($10). And although no one is sure what they are, pieces that look like horizontally halved spools threaded on a vertical stick ($15) make cool wall décor.
There's no mystery about the function of a propeller form ($45), but the end uses of some items are, and will likely remain, enigmatic unless she can track down catalogues. Meanwhile, previous work experience with architects and designers lets her suggest roles for pieces that might make other people think "Yes, great, but what would I do with it?"
Apart from the occasional sanding, Levar has left the wood-mostly pine, sometimes fir, occasionally cherrywood, ebony, or mahogany-as close to the original as possible, with code numbers still in place. A sturdy, angular, red-painted piece morphs into a wall-mounted shelf ($20). A narrow rectangular object, 115 centimetres long, "may be a pattern for a steel post", finds a new role as a chunky candle holder for a dinner table ($125). Stacking eight individual pieces-black, unpainted, a couple faintly gilded-creates a hip-height handled urn ($375) "just to give the idea that you can build with them, or on them," she says.
"When we first introduced the foundry pieces, I thought they would appeal more to men, but women are buying them too," she says. Set people for movies and designers have all found their way here. Drive-bys circle the block to check out a store window holding an Eiffel Tower-shaped birdcage (already sold) and a robust driftwood chair ($175) from Bowen Island.
With its lavender walls, original 1950s checkered floor, and overhead lineup of white paper lanterns, Sister Kate's seems to belong on the Drive or in Yaletown, but Burnaby-besides being Marcia Levar's childhood stomping ground-"comes down to sustainability". Uptown locations equal uptown prices. Here you can pick up a fragment of the city's industrial history for little more than the cost of a Frappuccino.
Things is a good catchall for the other treasures lining shelves or hiding beneath chests and tables. Your first circuit reveals an old bingo caller with an iron frame, gilt-painted cage, and original wooden balls ($60); on your second, you notice vintage textiles, including a magnificent hand-crocheted bedspread, art-deco boxes, chinaware, and books. As Levar says, "It's a store you have to spend a bit of time in." True, so make a note that hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (till 6 p.m. on Thursdays).
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