Thief of Arts
It may not be easy being green, but it’s certainly cutting edge in the hands of product designer Mark Hannah.
By Carl Kozlowski 09/01/2009
A two-inch sign and a house slogan aren’t the only curiosities at Thief, a highly unusual design showroom in the heart of Old Pasadena. Thief’s owner and designer, Mark Hannah, sells stylish furnishings, wearables, rideables and artwork, all created from repurposed materials. And with his five-year-old company, he hopes to radically reinvent what consumers consider “new” goods.
Hannah’s slogan is “Thief it,” which he hopes will someday be as popular as Nike’s ubiquitous “Just Do It.” Why Thief it?” he writes on his Web site, thiefit.com. “It is an answer to a question. Next time somebody asks you what to do with an object that would otherwise be thrown away, tell them to Thief It. Create a unique object or product that is your own and save it from the future, which would probably have been a big hole in the ground and, depending on its composition, a very, very long time decaying.”
Hannah, 39, designs clever variations on traditional American products, such as a wall clock wryly emblazoned with the letters in “stop watching” instead of numbers and planters made from empty paint cans, even motorcycles made from reclaimed parts. The highlight of the collection is what he calls the Turn Series — furniture built from reclaimed hardwood flooring, recycled metals and plastics, which can be transformed into a variety of objects: desks, tables, sculptures and benches suitable for just about everywhere, from living rooms to offices and playgrounds.
The pieces are composed of hollow, undulating wooden slats that resemble tank tracks. Turn the Turn table one way, and its flat surface serves as a desk. Flip it over, and its dipped surface serves as a recliner. Stand it up, and it can be a sculpture. The same goes for the metal versions, which can either serve as a three-seat bench or a table, depending on which you way you turn them. Thief starts with either reclaimed pine, maple or oak from its own collection, sustainable bamboo or materials provided by its customers, and then turns them into Turn objects at a family-run wood-and-metal-working shop in Hannah’s hometown of Grants Pass, Oregon. The series, which was included in the Pasadena Museum of California Art Design Biennial in 2007, is Thief’s most popular and lucrative line, ranging in price from $400 to $2,500.
Hannah says the Turn Series evolved serendipitously. “I was forced to create an object for a very small space I was living in, so I wanted to focus on manipulating an object that could be used for many purposes,” the trim, steely-gazed designer recently explained at his Pasadena showroom. “I made a table, lounge chair and sculpture that could be pushed off to the side to create the most space, and I love kinetic sculpture because it can move around and turn into different things. It’s great for those who need lots of space, and I also like to create objects you can interact with.”
More important, the furniture, which reduces waste, is planet-friendly.
Yet Hannah, who opened the showroom in 2006, doesn’t identify with the green mainstream. “Green is just a color,” he said. “It’s not really meaningful the way we usually hear about it. People think if you recycle or drive a Prius, you’re green. Those are good actions, but they constitute what I call a green mold — fitting into what popular belief and industry is telling them is green.”
And that doesn’t go far enough, in Hannah’s view. He believes that a green lifestyle should be all-encompassing, guiding consumers’ choices from the sustainable ethanol they buy for their high-mileage cars to homes built from recycled materials and reclaimed wood.
“I’m trying to encourage people to take products and create a second use for them, no matter what the project is, from clothes to water bottles to wood floors,” he said. “I make very simple designs with an eye toward making a very powerful statement, whether with cigarettes or Turn tables. You have to do it instead of just saying, ‘I’m green.’ A lot of what we do in society amounts to lip service.”
His father, former electronics technician Terry Hannah, says Mark was raised to be aware of his impact on the planet. “I’ve always been kind of a real stickler for recycling and, as a family living in Oregon, we were conscious of the environment in particular,” he said.
As a student in industrial design at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, Hannah took part in work programs in both interior and exterior design at the Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Motors in Michigan. He later parlayed that experience into designing Web sites for a global branding firm and a marketing company, as well as other products for the Walt Disney Co. and Columbia Pictures.
Thief sprang out of a job he did in Pasadena. “There was a local business that I was working with that decided not to pay me for copyrighted work,” Hannah recalled. “I had developed T-shirt designs for this company, and they had licensed this stuff out and didn’t want to pay me any part of the licensing fees. So I started Thief, and I put the name Thief on all those T-shirts. It was a tongue-in-cheek joke to that person, but to the rest of the world, it was a new T- shirt company. It evolved into recycling shirts from whatever company I thought could be doing a better job in their designs. And if you put your own twist on an existing product, then you too could ‘thief it.’”
Hannah’s most intriguing creations with a message may be his Kiss My Butts boxes — painted cigarette packages, which he encourages smokers to fill with used butts and send to consumer response centers. “We say if you use the cigarettes, fine, but participate in environmental action by mailing the butts in a stamped package we provide to the manufacturer, for them to take care of the trash,” Hannah said. “Cigarettes are one of the worst trash sources on the planet, with billions littering the planet anywhere people live.”
Indeed, in Hannah’s world view, even everyday objects speak volumes. “There’s a statement being made when someone asks, ‘Why would you use a coffee pot for a planter?’” he said. “It’s a conversation piece, and a very important conversation at that. I say you bought it, you use it; take responsibility instead of throwing it down in a big hole in the ground.”
Thief is located at 47 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Visit thiefit.com or call (626) 831-7894.
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