Remember when people got dressed to drive and the back seat of a `57 Chevy could get you in trouble?
Well, compacts may rule the road now, but you can return to those racy back-seat days, while having all the comforts of home-with a `50s car couch.
Sante Fe artist Jody Norskog started making car couches about 10 years ago from car parts found in junkyards.
”An artist friend of mine, Sherry Stein, and I wanted to do something with cars,” says Norskog, a former industrial designer. ”The couch was the best idea and the most obvious. Then I took off and started making the other furniture. I work primarily with `50s cars because they`re such an icon of America when everything was great and golden and big and invincible.”
That same `50s nostalgia bug also bit Car`s the Star president Phillip Schroeder in Kansas City, Mo.
”I guess their appeal is that they represent a simpler, more carefree era,” says Schroeder, who first began manufacturing his car couches, coffee tables and neon tailfin lamps four years ago. That was after he ”burned out in advertising” and started decorating his home.
”A big car used to be a symbol of wealth,” says Schroeder. ”It was a sort of status equalizer. You might be poor, but if you saved enough to buy a Cadillac, then you had instant status. And big cars also have a certain sexual arrogance about them.”
Most of Schroeder`s couches and love seats are reconstructed from actual old models; some are fiberglass reproductions. He says he draws his design inspiration from the Italian Memphis group of designers, and his couches have found their way onto the sets of MTV, ”Caddyshack II,” ”Miami Vice” and the Miss Teenage America pageant.
Prices, of course, vary according to the options: built-in stereos, electric antennas and telephones, wet bars and refrigerators.
The Car`s the Star furniture is available through Carson Pirie Scott & Co. in Chicago or directly through Schroeder`s company at Car`s the Star Crown Center Shops, 2450 Grand Ave., Kansas City, Mo. 64108; (816) 221-1957.
Norskog`s furniture pieces are available through the Hokin Kaufman Gallery, 210 W. Superior St.; 266-1211. –
