URBAN ART : Mission: Furniture

The biblical prophet Micah had a vision in the ancient desert: “. . . and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” Centuries later, Samuel Tolkin, a Santa Monica architect, had a similar vision, down to the desert part even.

When Tolkin, a longtime aircraft aficionado, learned that many old U.S.-made warplanes have been languishing for decades in junkyards in the country’s deserts, it added jet fuel to an already burning passion.

“America’s best technology has always been in our aircraft and aerospace, and I just thought it sad it would all end up in a junkyard,” he says. So he decided to save the planes and do something artistic with them. And that something turned out to be furniture--tables, chairs, sofas, all bearing the moniker: “Swords to Plowshares.”

After months of tracking down some of the old planes, he found bits and pieces of an F-86 fighter jet and a military 707 in a Palmdale back yard and other aviatorial discards at a Tucson “boneyard” that purchases military scrap. He shipped the parts back to his studio and started the artistic process.

So far, he’s beaten F-86 and 707 stabilizers into desks, and a pylon from an Air Force transport jet into a birdhouse. The 707 desk and the birdhouse sold for $4,500 and $500, respectively, and the F-86 desk (above) is at the Art House in Venice and goes for $5,000.

Each piece took 300 to 400 hours of work, he says, and makes a political statement as well as an artistic one. “My hope is to keep the visual beauty of the piece alive,” Tolkin says, “and end its violent history.”