| Four years ago, Jennie Argie and Andrew Thornton were a couple of Brooklyn, NY, artists with a baby who needed furniture they couldn’t afford to buy. So they made some. By training a painter (Argie) and architect (Thornton), they had always made their own things, and they saw it as no big deal to start exploring the fabrication of stuff for youngsters. Today, Argie and Thornton have two children, a third on the way, and a booming company called Argington that makes modern, ’60s-inspired, eco-friendly kids’ furniture.We sat down with the couple at a sidewalk cafe in Williamsburg, the hip Brooklyn neighborhood where they’re based, to talk about the company. Argie exuded the resolve of a woman on an eco-mission; Thornton was all sparked up with the excitement of new materials and processes, and was readying for a trip the next day to China, where Argington now has its manufacturing operation.
When did the green lightbulb go on for you?
Argie: It all happened at the same time, with the birth of our child and the birth of the business. When you have a child, you sort of rethink life. You want to be healthy for them-you want your food to be pesticide-free, your milk hormone-free, your furniture nontoxic. So having children heightens your awareness. And in our business, which was just taking off, we were noticing a lot of wood waste in the manufacturing. Our original ambition with Argington was to do solid hardwood, with almost hand-rubbed finishes. But as we got bigger, the waste increased.
Thornton: We had bags and bags of wood trash. You’re taking hardwood, something that’s very organically shaped, and making it conform to a module-planing it, joining it, trying to make it square.
Argie: So not only for economic reasons, but also for environmental ones, we wanted to be wiser with our material-to rethink the use of wood.
How did you wise up?
Argie: We realized there was less waste using sheets of plywood, the kind of plywood where they spiral-cut a tree and use the whole tree.
Thornton: People associate plywood with a builders’ material-it’s kind of foul. But from a waste point of view, you have to think of plywood like dough when you cut cookies with a cookie cutter. Using a computer-controlled machine, you can go in and literally make any cut, any shape, at any point in the board. That makes for a very efficient use of the tree. And we use sustainable birch ply, with low-VOC [volatile organic compound] glues.
When you talk about rethinking your lifestyle as new parents, you’re referring to green as a health issue. In rethinking the way you build furniture, you’re dealing with the health of the planet. Two separate things?
Argie: We like to distinguish between environmentally sound and sustainable on the one hand, and organic on the other. These are two clearly different things, and sometimes you have to give up a little bit of what’s good for the environment for the sake of the organic, or vice versa.
What choices have you had to make?What magic power over the environment would you most like to have?
Argie: Number one, to stop global warming
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On a scale of light apple green to dark forest green, how green is Argington?
Thornton: We always think we can do a better job. But relative to the environmental atrocities that are happening out there, maybe we’re doing a pretty good job. We know where are weaknesses are. It takes real money to fix those things.
Argie: Our factory uses no electric lights; there are skylights, because electricity is so expensive in China. And they don’t use electric sanders-they do it by hand. We truck when there’s a large-enough shipment, and we’re close to the port.
So, what color of green does that make you?
Argie: Maybe pine green?
Thornton: Pine green is pretty good.
There’s a confluence of green design for kids and modern design for kids. What about the person who’s looking for a Windsor-style green high chair?
Thornton: When you think about style and the environment, it’s a question of materiality-the difference between using unsustainable mahogany and sustainable bamboo plywood. What style of furniture do those materials lend themselves to? Can you make a Windsor high chair or a rococo armoire out of bamboo? I don’t think you can.
A lot of your furniture grows or adapts, with cribs turning into toddler and twin beds, changing tables turning into dressers, and high chairs turning into regular chairs. What’s the thinking there?
Thornton: In this ephemeral world of children’s furniture, you want it to transform as much as possible. You want to get your money’s worth, and you want to have less waste. Our toy box can be used for years-it can be used in so many different parts of the house.
Argie: That’s partly why we’ve resisted color. We’ve used wood tones instead of, say, bright orange, because we want people to use it as an adult piece later and not throw it away.
What eco-accomplishment are you most proud of?
Argie: I think we’ve influenced our industry and raised the bar for other companies to be a little bit more aware of what their competitors are doing on an environmental level. There’s a ripple effect.
And what eco-sin are you least proud of?
Argie: Our packing materials. You have to fortify assembled furniture to the hilt to ship it, which creates waste. But if we don’t use a ton of material, half the shipment arrives damaged, and then we’re creating landfill.
Thornton: It would be wonderful to find some type of organically based corn-puff-type material for packing.
Argie: We are in the process of trying to fabricate our own packing material, but nothing’s been successful so far. If large companies made the push and put the money into research, then the material would be available to us.
What’s your greatest challenge in making Argington deep forest green?
Argie: The real challenge is making it as green as possible at an affordable price. You could make something so 100 percent green that you could chop it up and eat it, but it might cost a fortune. We would love to take on the challenge of being green for less-to maybe do a Target line. It would be feasible, it would be challenging, it would be very rewarding.
Thornton: To participate in environmentalism all across the board costs money-the hidden processes in manufacturing that the consumer never sees, like: Do you just dump your waste or recycle it? It would be cool to control every aspect of production and establish a model of what an environmental company should be. That would be awesome.
That’s your eco-dream?
Thornton: Yes. And if we had the money, we would be there.
Argie: You want the furniture to be sustainable and last, so there’s less wood cutting and less landfill; you also want it to be organic, so if a child wants to chew on it, it’s OK. We originally tried to use water-soluble finishes, but if you put a water-soluble finish on a crib, it breaks down very quickly, especially with all the wiping of the furniture that goes on with a child. If you use a nontoxic oil-based finish, it’s not 100 percent organic, but it’s definitely better for the environment, because it means the furniture can have a long life. |
