Purpose Restoration’s witty recycled furniture <br> on display Tuesday in Culver City

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Purpose Restoration, a four-person workshop specializing in transforming unloved furniture into one-of-a-kind functional art pieces, will have its first public show on Tuesday in Culver City. The company was founded a year ago by designer and owner Jason Fox, 35, who says he left a job overseeing the construction of stores for the fashion retailer BCBG ‘to do something creative with my hands.’

Fox is among a growing breed who reclaim destined-for-landfill objects. ‘There’s a need for recycling furniture with a graphic edge,’ he says.

Nothing could be more graphic than the ‘Butcher,’ above. Fox’s spin on the rolling kitchen cart is one of nine pieces that will be on display at the show. Crafted from an old television stand, it sports casters and a butcher block top. The unit is decorated with silhouettes of 22 knives that were painstakingly stenciled around the sides and across the raised molding on the upper drawer and lower cabinet of the front.

‘The ridges made it very difficult,’ says Fox, who also lacquered the piece to protect the artwork. The price tag: $960.

Though he cites Japanese graphic design, graffiti and tattoo art as inspirations, Fox says, ‘we don’t want our pieces to look like Ed Hardy.’ The designer, who will be on hand at the exhibition, welcomes custom commissions from people providing their own furniture and concepts.

See how Fox up-cycled a Colonial style dresser after the jump.

Purpose Restoration at High Profile Productions, 5896 Smiley Drive, Culver City; (310) 838 3800. Tuesday, 4 to 9 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

At Purpose Restoration, sandpaper, paint, chrome hardware and a lot of imagination turned the Yankee Doodle highboy, below left, into the ‘Shadow’ dresser, below right. It’s an ideal bedroom piece for those who like linens by companies such as Amenity Home and is priced $1,275.

-- David Keeps