Functional structure

What most furniture builders hide, Timothy Biggs puts on display.

Chunky hinges. Industrial-worthy rivets. Salvaged metal. It’s his trademark style of blending modern edginess with an antique flair, and it’s rapidly growing in popularity among Spokane businesses and homes.

Biggs Metal Art, the company the 27-year-old started five years ago, supplies made-to-order furniture pieces, business signs and architectural features, such as railings and staircases.

The artist embraces the imperfections of his materials, giving his projects a vintage feel by using salvaged metal and wood taken from old buildings in downtown Spokane.

His work also celebrates “funky, unique forms,” said Biggs, pointing to a recent venture: upside-down cone-shaped stools lined with stubby rivets. He made a dozen of the stools for a new restaurant set to open this spring in downtown Spokane.

“It’s a functional sculpture,” Biggs said of his craft.

A longtime Spokane resident, Biggs grew up on the West Plains with his parents and sisters. His art is a combination of his parents’ influence: His father is a car dealer and passed onto his son the ability to fix and build machines. His mother is an artist and was “always creative,” Biggs said.

He learned to weld during his years at Lewis and Clark High School. He graduated in 1998, and moved to Los Angeles, in 1999 to find a career. He dabbled in a host of them: designing clothes, building projects for theme parks and working on movie sets.

Two years later, Biggs planned to move to Europe, but car trouble during a stopover in Spokane kept him stateside.

“I was destined to be here, I suppose,” said Biggs, who lives in a building on Main Avenue owned by artist Dan Spalding. Biggs’ signature can be seen on many of the units inside, with stair railings and furniture designed by him.

Biggs got his start in metalwork by approaching downtown Spokane business owners about replacing their ordinary or unattractive signs. His art now can be viewed on such stores as Boo Radley’s gift shop, The Daily Grind coffee shop and Raw Sushi and Island Grill.

In 2003 he was one of seven artists selected by the Spokane Arts Commission and the Davenport District board to build benches for downtown Spokane. Biggs formed his from recycled gears and valves from Washington Water Power Co.’s old downtown steam plant. It sits on the corner of First Avenue and Lincoln Street.

Biggs now employs two people, and he’s already growing out of his current metal shop, which he moved into a year ago near the intersection of Boone Avenue and Monroe Street.

He currently is designing a catalog of furniture, which he plans to market to designers and eventually to wholesalers. Biggs recently forged a custom dining room table from salvaged metal, complete with hoof-shaped feet and a thick concrete tabletop studded with inlaid metal.

Sue Bradley, owner of the Tinman Gallery and the Ruby Slipper in Spokane, commissioned Biggs to construct jewelry display cases for her gallery and display counters for both businesses.

The pieces are a “nice combination of whimsy and practicality,” Bradley said.

The jewelry displays are reminiscent of old steamer trunks, with heavy rivets decorating the cases, she said.

For the counters, Biggs used corrugated siding salvaged from his parents’ barn to form the sides. “It’s the kind of thing that someone will inevitably say, ‘That’s so cool. I can’t believe that guy thought of that,’ ” Bradley said.