26 Oct 2010, Posted by admin in MEET, 0 Comments

Meet Your Popsicle Stick Furniture Maker: David Hrobowski

Among those average days that magically turn into memorable moments, meeting David Hrobowski ranks right up there near the top. This is a man who makes furniture out of perhaps the most clichéd third grade hobbyist’s tools: Popsicle sticks and Elmer’s glue. Sure, most of us have made more than our share of Popsicle log cabin houses and the like as kids, but let’s just say you don’t want to put that circa 1978 one-room number on display next to any of Hrobowski’s pieces.

Making Popsicle furniture is a career revival of sorts for the 56-year-old antiques dealer, if you can call rekindling a talent first discovered at the ripe old age of 9-years-old a true career revival.

With Hrobowski, you sort of feel like you can. He is incredibly talented and passionate (or as passionate as one can be over Popsicle sticks). So much that it almost seems inappropriate to call those swirling 7-foot New Orleans-flavored floor lamps, or that mahogany-stained dining table made from 20,000 hand-glued Popsicle sticks, simply furniture.

You’d have to be an incredibly focused (or simply patient) person to spend the countless hours gluing together bits of wood to make these designs. Or maybe the right word is exacting (just watch Hrobowski at work arranging zucchini bread slices for art openings).

“I don’t count the number of Popsicle sticks or the hours,” he says. “I just live from color band to color band.” Get the full story here or jump straight to the photo gallery.