A Guide to the Best of Southern California : HANDMADE : Flash Furniture

A MAN’S HOME is his oasis. “He should come home and be refreshed,” says Brad Flaharty, the designer behind Flash Productions furniture. Flaharty puts to use bright, shiny enamel colors to help solve such mundane dilemmas as where to put the newspaper: perhaps in the racks on the sides of a faithful wooden dog that serves as an end table ($540).

Tired feet? Why not employ the Flash Productions frog-shaped footstool ($395). A hall valet ($860) can take charge of the car keys.

Flaharty began creating his bold, unique pieces for his personal use. “I didn’t like what I could afford,” he says, “so I made what I needed.” These days, in his home, Flaharty has a Jeep TV table--the television set fits into the Jeep’s windshield. “I try to blend in classical features so that my furniture will go with as many kinds of furniture as possible.”

Flash Productions are well-built and painstakingly finished. The cabinet-grade birch plywood and three coats of boat enamel ensure their safe delivery through any storm or visiting team of quintuplets--even the simultaneously funny and practical wiggly striped ‘gator coffee table (storage is located in the belly of the beast and in its jagged-tooth mouth), which sells for $1,295. Brad Flaharty’s Flash Productions furniture is available at HaRry, 148 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 938-3344; or through Flash Productions, P.O. Box 2834, San Rafael, Calif. 94912, (415) 457-7869.