Prune: Steel on my mind

Tyler Watamanuk on steel and design.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about steel. It probably started last summer when Diane Keaton’s longtime interior designer, Stephen Shadley, posted a photo of her stainless steel kitchen, part of a turn-of-the-millennium renovation featured in Architectural Digest in 1999. 

Last winter, I watched as a popular interiors creator refreshed his own kitchen, swapping a colorful Joan Miró print for a cold-formed aluminum shelf from Frama. Last month, I read about a newly remodeled kitchen owned by a food stylist, featuring sleek, stainless cabinetry. Then, I stumbled upon the Instagram account “Inox Forever,” curated by the brand director of Swedish furniture company Hem. (Inox, for the uninitiated, is French for stainless steel.)

Cold, cold steel. So much of it.

But then my mind shifted to a different kind of steel. A line from John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row describes a married couple living in an abandoned metal boiler in an empty lot: “Gradually, it became red and soft with rust, and gradually the mallow weeds grew up around it.” The image reminded me of Richard Serra’s sculptures, crafted from weathering steel.

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