DANDELION QUIRKY INDUSTRIAL TABLES
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In January 2008 Alan McEwen and his wife Christine established DANDELION Stone Troughs & Architectural Antiques which was to become an extremely exciting chapter in both their lives. The couple registered the firm in February 2008.
Alan, had enjoyed a long and interesting career for over 45 years as a qualified industrial boilermaker and mechanical engineer, including almost 40 years as Managing Director and Chief Engineer of a nationally renowned specialist boiler engineering company which he had founded in 1968. By October 2007 Alan resigned and handed over the business to his son. The company is still thriving.
With Alan being a knowledgeable, ‘hands-on’ engineer, with a passion for historic vernacular architecture and also with a deep and growing interest in salvaging old building materials, in 1998 he personally designed a new house which later he built with his own hands on land belonging to the family. Thus, World From Rough Stones House, was created. Alan used reclaimed York building stone, stone flags, Welsh roof slates and timbers salvaged from old cotton and woollen mills and other industrial buildings from all over the north of England. During December 2005 Alan and Christine moved into the house.
Despite not being in the first flush of youth, most of their friends being retired, nonetheless, Alan and Christine became switched on with the thought of setting up a small architectural antiques business, specialising in the buying and selling of old stone troughs, millstones and other garden stone antiques. Alan had just completed building the DANDELION courtyard which was paved with massive old York stone flags that he had salvaged from a Lancashire cotton weaving shed. The courtyard was ideal for displaying old stone troughs and diverse antiques stone curiosities.
The couple decided to specialise in selling and also buying original, antique, English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish stone troughs, old millstones, old standing stones, together with a fascinating miscellany of old stone and metal garden ornaments and curiosities.
A professional website designer built the DANDELION website which has proved to be eminently successful in promoting this highly specialised small business. In record time, DANDELION were supplying these beautiful old time garden ornaments to customers far and wide all over the U.K., Ireland and also commenced regularly exporting to the U.S.
DANDELION QUIRKY INDUSTRIAL TABLES
With Alan’s engineering background, together with his life-long interest in British industrial history; he is also an acclaimed author of several books, two years ago, with his passion for up-cycling (Alan prefers re-engineering), using salvaged parts from Victorian machinery, he commenced building Quirky Industrial Tables. Thus DANDELION Industrial Quirky Tables were born which, has complemented DANDELION’s main stream activities.
Ever since Alan built the first Quirky Industrial Table which was re-engineered from an early 19th century, belt-driven, cast-iron, industrial sewing machine, he has built over 30 tables ranging from narrow, timber-topped console tables using up-cycled cast-iron, Victorian ale house table-bases, through to medium sized tables using old mangles, with tops of either salvaged pine or hardwood or, York flag stones. Other Quirky Tables are built to customers’ own specifications from old agricultural and industrial machinery, with tops of York flag stone, Welsh slate, or green Irish slate.
Alan scours the entire country seeking Victorian and Vintage cast-iron saw benches, metal machinery bases from engineering workshops, cast-iron mangles and sundry old agricultural machinery, which he re-engineers in our own workshops to become DANDELION Quirky Industrial Tables. Tops of salvaged hard wood or pine are added for indoor dining tables and console tables, and for customers who enjoy ‘al-fresco’ dining out in the garden, Alan builds York flag stone-topped Quirky Tables.
DANDELION also create stunning kitchen islands using vintage iron with tops made from beautiful, old York flag stones salvaged from historic cotton and woollen mills. Alternative tops can be of Welsh slate, green Irish slate or, old steel plate with rivets and bolts, upcycled from old railway wagons and other industrial sources.
info@dandelionstonetroughs.co.uk
www.dandelionstonetroughs.co.uk
