Old car parts often get little to no respect…but furniture designer Ronen Wasserman, is out to change all of that with his incredible furniture fashioned out of reclaimed car parts. Saving vintage automotive culture from their an unfortunate encounter with the compactor or land-fill, Wasserman gives these throw-away items a new lease on life by making them into functional works of art.
Each project worked on in the studio reinvents the wheel of technique per its unique needs and material makeup. Unlike with wooden pieces, each creation in the Tinman studio contains at its base an independent iron frame that carries the weight (exactly like with cars), with the reclaimed metal taking the functional and aesthetic form of an external “wrapping”.
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Ronen Tinman
You can say Tinman has his feet in two worlds – the past and the future. He’s very interested in preserving the dents, the trademarks, the hood ornaments, the scars, and essentially the stories found in old car parts. But as he is very much aware of our limited pool of raw materials and the importance of reusing, recycling and repurposing existing resources, he is also very interested in creating a sustainable future. And to that end, he combines these two passions – preserving the past and creating a sustainable future – by making high-end, functional art out of old car parts.
Tinman finds beauty in the aspects of car parts that most people ignore – the markings, the folds, the warping. Through his pieces, he makes sure that he squeezes every ounce of potential from each car part he encounters. He sources his materials from various junk yards and claims to know what each part wants to be the moment he sees it. The actual process from finding the part to the final product can take up to a few months.
Tinman’s background in mechanical engineering gives him a unique understanding of how old car parts work, and is invaluable to being able to repurpose them into new and functional furniture pieces.
Besides his obsession with the stories embedded in these car parts, Tinman is also concerned with the embedded energy in them. “So many resources are invested in creating these parts – I’m convinced that they can be reused instead of constantly finding new raw materials to work with,” he says.
And so he takes dented, rusty car parts that might otherwise waste away in a junkyard or end up in the landfill and gives them a second life by turning them into beautiful boutique-worthy furniture.
A native of Tampa, FL Robert is the presiding editor and co-owner of both Down Shift Magazine and DS Holdings, LLC. A proud alumnus of the University of South Florida’s class of 2005 Robert is active in the Tampa Bay community and when not residing at his home in Tampa, FL enjoys traveling throughout the United States and abroad covering the motorsports and cultural phenomenon that shape our modern automotive enthusiast community.
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