Getting to grips with growing older can be tough. Some people buy a Corvette to feel young again, some clad themselves in spandex and take cycling far too seriously and others get really, really into coffee. If you’ve discovered that interior design is your passion in later life, then you might be excited to hear about a company that makes home furniture from old plane parts.
The company in question is called Skyart and it takes all kinds of old plane parts and turns them into all manner of furniture. We’re talking coffee tables, desks, chairs and even wall art that’s fashioned from retired airplane components.
The headline offerings from Skyart include a desk chair that’s made using the ejector seat from an F-5 fighter jet. The chair retails for $16,000 and uses the seat from an old Turkish Airforce fighter, which has been meticulously refurbished and even comes with a working four-point harness for those times when making spreadsheets just gets that bit too intense.
The perfect accompaniment to this piece is a desk that’s made using an entire airplane door. The desk comprises the door of a passenger plane that’s been stripped of its paintwork and polished to perfection. It’s held upright by what appear to be a couple of plane seat supports, and has a slick glass top to complete the transformation into a neat office desk. The price of all this? More than $8,000.
If you’re set for chairs and tables, then maybe a bit of airline art is what’s required to brighten up your man cave? If that’s the case, you might be interested in a wall lamp made from a section of wing, or a three-clock array that uses a section of plane fuselage - that one’s pretty cool, actually.
Usually airplane parts like this would be sent to an enormous plane graveyard, where they would eventually be stripped down and recycled. In some cases, old parts can be refurbished and re-used on planes that are still in service especially in times of a parts shortage around the world.
Instead of letting these components get melted down and turned into Coke cans, or similar, Skyart strips the aesthetically pleasing parts down and refurbishes them. Old seats are thoroughly cleaned down, recovered and turned into everything from weird sofas to spinning desk chairs.
They’re certainly statement pieces, that’s for sure, and would surely spark a conversation with anyone who set foot in your house should you elect to add a reverse thruster bar top to your living room. Is this the best way to advertise your love of aeronautics, or is better to stick to plane spotting and binging Big Jet TV in a storm? I’ll let you decide that one.