David Hrobowski and the art of the popsicle stick

By Jenn Garbee

Ann Johansson / For The Times

David Hrobowski makes furniture out of popsicle sticks — thousands of them, glued together one by one to construct spiraling 3-foot-tall table legs, lampshades finished in the most improbable fringe, or as pictured here, a room divider with Japanese flair, its red-dyed sticks arranged like cherry blossoms. The 56-year-old antiques dealer calls them "riffsticks" — each stick like a short melodic note repeated over and over.

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Ann Johansson / For The Times

Hrobowski made his first popsicle-stick piece — a lamp — when he was 9, but he gave up the hobby shortly thereafter. Decades later, when an outing with a friend took them to the downtown L.A. crafts store Moskatels, he revived his art. "The first thing I saw in the aisles were boxes of popsicle sticks," Hrobowski says. "It all just came right back to me."

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