KIDS’ STYLE : DESIGN : Look Ma, Hands On

Once upon a time, children’s furniture was plain--rocking chairs decorated with a youngster’s name and pretty flowers. Today, one-of-a-kind, functional art is the trend, prompted by a generation of affluent parents who are shopping for the kind of furniture they wish they’d had while growing up.

Running the gamut from painterly and realistic to fanciful and found art, this furniture mirrors what’s going on in the adult world. The Painted Beast, for instance, started out making chairs shaped like barnyard animals, but now furniture from the Los Angeles company also reflects a concern for endangered species. Chairs and matching tables depict polar bears, walruses, dolphins and desert foxes in their natural environments--the Arctic, the ocean and the desert.

Other children’s furniture falls into a category that artist Gary Komarin of P. H. Lowell in New Jersey dubs “historically resonant, with a slant toward art history.” His Mio Casa series includes chairs resembling scaled-down buildings such as a Greek temple and an American log cabin. His Savannah chair, based on an Egyptian throne, features a Picasso-faced girl with flowing red hair. The work of Santa Monica artist Heidi Wianecki fits into the waste-not theme of the ‘90s. For her chandeliers, she frequents flea markets and scours alleyways for new and used gelatin molds, plumbing parts and tin toys.

And then there’s the “just plain fun” classification, which includes Komarin’s blackboard table. Sandra Mathers, owner of the Santa Monica children’s store Harriett Dorn, explains that she keeps lots of chalk around: “Adults scribble on it as much as children.” In fact, there have been so many requests that an adult version with faux- marble legs is coming soon--for the child in all of us.

Stylist: Jill Sharp-Miller